Graphics Card Questions

[Teucer]

Hey all, I'm looking to get a new graphics card today, and was wondering about a few things. I'm looking in the 200-300 price range and have found these: Nvidia 680 ~ 250$
Nvidia 770 ~ 300$
Radeon R9 280X ~ 300$
Radeon 7970 Ghz edition ~ 260$


Now to my questions:

1. What would you recommend? I have two monitors running 1920x1080 and usually play full screen on one of them. I would like to play the latest games today (BF4) at near max settings. I would like this card to last a couple years, probably running games in a couple years at mid settings.

2. The radeon ones have 3Gb memory vs 2Gb for the Nvidia ones, but in the performance charts they seem to be pretty evenly ranked. I read somewhere that the more memory was useful when running multiple screens or higher resolutions but I only found that in one place, whats the benefit?

3. Is there a brand of the cards to avoid i.e. evga vs asus vs powercooler etc...? Do these even make a difference?

[BicycleMafioso]

GTX 770 is a re-branded GTX 680.

R9 280X is a re-branded HD7970 GHz.

1) R9 280X, especially once they finally roll out Mantle.
2) Amount of memory is not as important as membus, AMD-offerings is higher.
3) Some brands are better than the competitors, I'd hardly call one outright bad though.

[Teucer]

GTX 770 is a re-branded GTX 680.

R9 280X is a re-branded HD7970 GHz.

1) R9 280X, especially once they finally roll out Mantle.
2) Amount of memory is not as important as membus, AMD-offerings is higher.
3) Some brands are better than the competitors, I'd hardly call one outright bad though.

Thanks for the info, just looked at Mantle, looks pretty sweet. I'll be going with the R9 280X!