Recommend a Video Card?

If you can afford it go for GeForce GTX 660 or 660 Ti. Awesome bang for the buck I have 660 Ti and I'm maxing Generations at 2560x1440.

 

@Jay T. Dude. I was joking. For the love of God don't actually buy a Voodoo 3. It's a card from 1998. I thought the references to Quake 2/3 would be enough of a giveaway. I even said "the upcoming" Quake 3; a game from 1999. You get an old 3Dfx card and you won't be able to run anything dude. It's 15 years old. I was trying to make everyone laugh and ultimately it appears I failed. On a serious note just get a high-end Nvidia card. Choose the highest priced GeForce card you can afford and you should be set.

 

I have a 3570k that I use as a server/seedbox with 5 hdds + 2 dvds + 1 ssd, and a radeon 6950, and my corsair hx520w is never even at HALF load, unless I set the 6950 to 6970 mode/speeds/voltages, and run furmark and linpack at the same time.

PSU usages are seriously overestimated nowadays. As long as you get a quality PSU (google for some tests), that is rated for 80plus bronze at the very least, you'll have no problems with the setup you are planning even with a 400-500w PSU. You'd only need higher if you were considering SLI/Crossfire, but even thats redundant because by the time you need more gpu power, single cards will be 2-3x ahead of what you can buy today.

I've been using mostly Radeons for the past ten years, and this is complete and total bullshit. I've had some of my cards survive hazardous conditions without breaking a sweat that would've made Geforce cards burn down (as many have been documented to do so, sometimes caused by nvidias own drivers, sometimes with stable drivers just on their own). See if you can run a benchmark in any game with a Geforce 560 with only a passive Accelero S1 heatsink on it and no fan; the old first gen 5850 I used to have could do that without breaking a sweat. It hit as high as 130c on the VRMs, and then clocked the card down until temperatures were low enough - Geforce cards would spontaneously combust on the spot if you've tried this with them.

Yes, Radeon drivers do have some stupid issues, but Geforce cards have plenty of their own share of idiocies. The driver "stopped working and has recovered" almost every day is one such problem.

 

I'm terrible with video cards, but I am debating on replacing mine. Money isn't an issue, but I don't want to waste any.

I was considering buying two GeForce GTX 680's. Right now I have two GeForce GTX 560's in my computer. Would it be wiser to just buy one and SLI it to one of my 560's? Or would the 560 drop it down in performance. Also, I have room for three video cards. Would it be even wiser to buy two 680's and then sli one of the 560's with that? I really am not one to talk about video cards...

 

I have had best experience with Radeons myself, and my experiences have been pretty much like what Meat Miracle described.

One thing I saf here is that when you get a long (near) full length card I suggest you add someting to support it on the end, I have seen many cards that have died from PCB flexing from their weight...

 

Just sharing my experience, as I said, I've had nothing but problems with them and I don't know anyone who has had a good experience with Radeon cards, be them old ATi or new AMD ones. I'm not going to be buying any in future - but maybe I've just been unlucky. For the record, I've never had an nVidia card go above 80 degrees C (and have in fact never had a problem with them driver-wise either, unlike my current computer which is an absolute disaster running anything except catalyst 11.5).

Unless you're running at some ridiculous resolutions or 3d or something, one 560 should be enough for most of today's games at absolute max. 2 is definitely enough - you won't see much (if any) of a performance difference in upgrading to two 680's. If you are having problems with performance in games, it's very likely that your GPUs are NOT your bottleneck.

 

My video cards are the only thing I haven't upgraded, so I'm assuming they're the problem. Have an 8 core with 16 gigs of ram that I just bought 2 or 3 months ago.

EDIT: Also, I have three monitors. Wouldn't I require two cards with Nvidia?

 

First you can't SLI different models. Both cards need to be GTX 680, but could be different brands.
Second, I'd wait another couple of months and get GTX 780. Its going to have a better performance per watt & $ and it may be a better solution than 2x680.

 

Ah, fair enough. Triple monitors changes things - do you play games across all three as well? I imagine that is pretty fucking sweet!

What games do you have trouble running, out of pure curiosity? And I agree- wait for the 780s.

 

The only thing that doesn't run well is Skyrim. But then again, it wasn't designed to run on three screens.

 

iirc the geforce 6xx series can drive 3 monitors on a single card. I might be wrong though. I recall that they actually mentioned it as a feature when the series came out.
Radeons though, they can definitely drive fuck tons of monitors on one card, ever since the 6xxx series. 5xxx could only run max 3 of them except for that special eyefinity card. 6xxx and above can run 6 of them. However, you'll likely need Displayport adapters (which are pretty expensive, but still not as expensive as an entire new card), or if your monitors all can do displayport 1.2, you can daisy chain them.

Is it onboard (or mobile)?

 

Personally, I'm very happy with my Radeon HD 7770. Its power consumption is very low, I can still run Sonic Generations in 1080p at 60fps, and I only paid $135 for it back in August. I wouldn't recommend spending more than $200, though given the rate at which GPU technology grows. It's better to be 2 years behind the cutting edge of technology than to break the back to be the baddest motherfucker in the neighborhood for 2 years. SG's not a demanding game anyway. Maybe investigate the GTX 660Ti if you're clamoring for badass at less than $250

My Graphics Card

Enough Badass for 1 Monitor

 

I run my 3 monitors on my Nvidia GTX590. The reason Skyrim runs badly is because, well, the engine is shit. I can play Crysis 2, Max Payne 3, and many more triple A titles in Surround mode (a couple with 3D to boot!) at a very steady framerate but Skyrim has always played badly on one monitor when modded, and barely works on three when unmodded. Skyrim is not, and never will be a good benchmark. I recorded this video of me playing Generations, you can see how well it plays - the one Skyrim doesn't like.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_A-dqvUxoQ[/youtube]

However, Dead End Thrills (who takes them bitching screenshots, his Skyrim ones are stunning) said once the 690 made a massive improvement on his Skyrim performance.

 

I just picked up two of those. I can't wait.

 

GTX 650 and up would be a wise choice right now, considering how nVidia released today Shadow Play, their game recording software. It uses the hardware h264(or is is more appropriate to say x264?) encoder. They claim you can record 1080p 60fps with 5-10% performance impact, and it wont kill your hard drive as it records at up to 50mbps (7 MB/sec).

 

The GTX 650 is shit, don't get it. Grab a 7790 instead (~$105) or the 7850.