Best Graphic Card Setup

[calculator123]

For one thousand dollars, what would the best graphic card setup be? I have considered so many options! (Also please note that I live in Australia so every is very exspensive! Still $650 for GTX 780!) Also im planning on having 3 1080p displays to run things on?

 

[dudewitbow]

If you are running ultra high resolutions(4k, 3x 1080) I think the r9-290 fits the bill better(if you can fit it in your budget) though I recommend waiting till aftermarket varients are released for it as the card gets toasty on the reference cooler

 

[calculator123]

Do you prefer AMD or Nvidia, and do you suggest SLI/crossfire or a single card? I have had the biggest debate as whether to get AMD or Nvidia, if you prefer one could you please inform me of the reason/s that you prefer them?

 

[dudewitbow]

I run AMD(my laptops nvidia) I've recommended Nvidia to my friend who has a similarish build level as mines back in january. I personally prefer AMD but I dont let it get ahead of me on Price to performance on specified tasks.

preferably, Single card is a much better solution, but when you decide to go 3x 1080p, single card isnt much of an option and its recommended to go dual cards. In a dual card situation, crossfire has a slightly better scaling than sli does. In accordance to frametimes, the 290/290x utilize a new method of crossfire which eliminates stuttering on multi gpu setups, and SLI for kepler based gpus have been consistent so far, so there isnt a problem. Because the 290/290x has no retail aftermarket cooling, OC headroom on the current batch of gpus are extremely limited and the cards itself run at a target temperature of 95 degrees(which may be uncomfortable for some to pick up on the fact that the gpu was designed to work under high temperatures). The memory bandwith on the 290/290x tagged along with its 4gb vram is useful for ultra high resolution setups. the 780/780ti's advantage is that it has an established cooler and will most likely clock better and work better on the single monitor setup.

TL;DR: if you are comparing current coolers, the 780/780ti has much value on a single monitor setup. Once you expand to your multimonitor setup, the value of the 290/290x skyrockets, as these gpus were designed with ultra high resolutions in mind.

I personally wouldn't want to go drop down to a 770 as the memory bus is significantly smaller(making heavy games even heavier) when you eventually go onto the multi monitor setup.

 

[calculator123]

Thanks I think I will go with 2 R9 290's or should I spend the extra money and buy 2 R9 290x's?

 

[dudewitbow]

value wise, I personally think the 290 has significantly more value. that 150$ price gap could easily be used on something like better aftermarket cooling(e.g Arctic Accelerando)

 

[calculator123]

What is the difference between the two, isn't it just the R9 290 has a little less processors and a lower clock speed?

 

[dudewitbow]

pretty much

 

[calculator123]

Would these graphics cards be bottle-necked by an i7-4770k?

 

[dudewitbow]

the higher resolutions go, games become slightly more CPU bound. the 4770k is still a top performing CPU(only to be bested by the SB-E/IB-E varients of course). to be bottlenecked that you lose a significant amount of performance, the answer is no, but a good clock on a 4770k can make it go far enough for practical uses.