The discussion of old hardware and need of upgrading is a sound one.
I feel monitor resolution and consoles still are the culprits, and upgrades should only happen for purpose; When you feel it can't pull its own weight or you need it for specifics, be it multi monitor setup or GPGPU.
As for microstuttering, I'd say there are worse (GTX 560 Ti not featured I'd assume below GTX 580, at time of GTX 690's release).
Aside from the fact that my motherboard does not have a second electronically run 8x lane (asus p8p67 piece of junk) your motherboard HAS to have an nvidia sli chip to support it. -.- xfire however does not cost manufacturers a dime to tag on because it does not require such.things.
Deltrus, you are thinking of the NF200 chip that was used for quad and 4 way SLI on 50 series motherboards
intel has told panel manufactures that they want 4k panels as the new top end computer panel to replace 2560, i would wager that if we dont start seeing 4k panels in the $1500 price range that intel will step in and make their own
there is no reason for 4k panels to cost so much anymore, that it price gouging, to which panel manufacturers have already got in trouble with
Lets see some 1400/1600p IPS panels selling for under $400 first (yes I know there are one or two models but I'm talking U2711-level), then I'll start getting curious about 4k.
WoW Character: Wintel - Frostmourne (OCE)
Gaming rig: i7 7700K, GTX 1080 Ti, 16GB DDR4, BenQ 144hz 1440p
Signature art courtesy of Blitzkatze
Well the new 27 inch 1440p screen from dell is selling for 500 euro (U2713HM), so it is getting close.
Crysis was horribly optimized. Crysis Warhead is one of the best optimized engines I've ever seen. Update 1.2 brings the Warhead engine to the original Crysis. I'm pretty sure benchmark websites are using either Crysis Warhead or Crysis 1.2+ to benchmark GPUs.
The reason Crysis cripples systems is because of several factors:
1) Open world
2) Enormous view distance (part of 1)
3) High detail objects (dem trees man)
4) Special effects (water, frost, ice)
Compare: Crysis Warhead and Battlefield 3
All things considered, Crysis is on par with Battlefield 3 in terms of performance: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/555?vs=618
By the way, I've been able to run Crysis Warhead on 4 year old integrated GPU laptops at 720p with 25 FPS (no apparent stutter in combat). The engine is quite good.
You sure about that? Crysis 1 Wars and Warhead are the same game on the same exact engine. The view distance compared to BF3 or WoW isnt really stellar, the "open world" exists about as much as it does in any Modern FPS, i'd take some time and look into the physics of Crysis and then you will understand why it still crippled cards. Websites are using the BENCHMARKS inside crysis warhead, which is the expansion that opened up mod support.
anymore information on the gtx 780? im itching to get rid of my 7970