Graphics Card Question

[Boatshoes24]

Ok, so this is sort of two questions for anyone who might know.

1) I am looking to get 2nd graphics card soon. I currently have a GTX 560. I want to run three separate monitors and don't have an interest in running SLI. I basically want to run my main monitor off the new graphics card and my two old monitors off of the current card. So my first question would be: What are your recommendations for a new card (up to $300)? I've ad some forums on this topic, but wanted to get an idea about the specific cards I have in mind and maybe how they compare with each other. Considering currently:

-Radeon 7870 (I think this was the right one in that price range, could have not been xx70 maybe 80 or 90) - this card also is what my 2nd question is about
-GTX 660
-GTX 560 Ti
-any recommendations the community may have

2) My second question is whether or not I can run an ATI and Nvidia card at the same time, running different monitors. I have seen in a forum or two that this is possible with windows 7, but I'm unsure as to what the cons are (if it is actually possible to do)

-I'll note that I have an i5 2nd gen 2500, 8GB DDR3 (1600?) RAM, I believe a z68 mobo.

Thanks a ton in advance for any input!

edit: Wanted to add in the question as to whether my processor will bottleneck my machine from running the game at ultra + fraps and such or any potential issues.

[Faithh]

Your cpu shouldnt bottleneck any graphics card at the market currently.

I guess you'll get annoying stuff with using 2 different brand graphics card tbh. Like on the 2nd screen you're browsing and the browser is making use of your new gpu acceleration instead of the old one. Drivers interfering with each other etc.

But why do you need to use 2 different cards? A single 7870 should be fine for this. I'll take that you use the other 2 monitors to just browse or watch a movie orsomething instead of eyefinity?

But BF3 at 1080p ultra can almost soak 2GB full of the vram and yeah you can run out of vram if you're browsing in google chrome (watchin vids from youtube) and on the other monitor watching a 1080p movie.. If you don't play that intensive games, then I don't see the problem of a 2GB card anyway.

Also the competive card for the 7870 is the gtx 660 ti in same price range. http://be.hardware.info/reviews/3023...radeon-hd-7870

The gtx 660 ti is better. And Currently you have a gtx 560 which has the same drivers as the 660 ti, so you should have less problems.

[inux94]

Why would you have a a seperate card for 2 extra monitors when the 7870 (and the 6xx line) can run 3 displays with no problems? It's not going to cause any additional strain on the GPU's.

There's not really any bottlenecking in any system unless you're pairing a GTX 680 and a Core 2 Duo CPU, the game is either going to be CPU intensive or GPU intensive.

[Boatshoes24]

Yeah I was considering just going with the 7870 and running all 3 off of that. The games I'm playing right now are pretty much just WoW and GW2. I feel like when I'm running two monitors with my 560 and my game (being on ultra) with 2 monitors running 1920x1080, that I'm seeing a drop in quality (a little more choppy). So it seems that with the 7870 or gtx 660ti, I should be able to run 3 monitors (2 would be 1920x1080 and one only goes to 1680x1050) and WoW/GW2 at my current settings without seeing any drop in performance?

I'm wondering if this could be an in game setting as well. I know that when I turn down Multisampling to 1x or 2x it is a noticeable improvement, but I like to keep it at 4x as a personal preference.

With my current 560 are there any additional nvidia control panel settings I could try changing?

[Faithh]

Yeah I was considering just going with the 7870 and running all 3 off of that. The games I'm playing right now are pretty much just WoW and GW2. I feel like when I'm running two monitors with my 560 and my game (being on ultra) with 2 monitors running 1920x1080, that I'm seeing a drop in quality (a little more choppy). So it seems that with the 7870 or gtx 660ti, I should be able to run 3 monitors (2 would be 1920x1080 and one only goes to 1680x1050) and WoW/GW2 at my current settings without seeing any drop in performance?

I'm wondering if this could be an in game setting as well. I know that when I turn down Multisampling to 1x or 2x it is a noticeable improvement, but I like to keep it at 4x as a personal preference.

With my current 560 are there any additional nvidia control panel settings I could try changing?

Well with a gtx 660 ti or gtx 660 whatever, you don't need to update your drivers or throwing your old card away. gtx 660 + gtx 560 would work better in combination than an amd + nvidia. You're not going to like the drivers interfering with each other for example. Don't try to connect your graphics card with an sli bridge (herp de derp)

You can pretty much just connect your 2 monitors which are being used for browsing to your older card, so your gtx 660 only displays your main monitor.

Amd released new drivers 12.11 which improved the performance of the new 7 series. But Nvidia will do this soon as well with 310.11 (currently in beta)

This link shows you the benchmarks of all cards between amd & nvidia with updated scores with the new 12.11 driver for AMD.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/A...rmance/20.html

660ti is still outperforming the 7950 even..

4x aa is nothing for an 660ti not even 8x.