A single HD7970 will push Eyefinity resolutions quite nicely at a mixture of medium, high and even very high / ultra settings depending on the game. For example; I can push over 60FPS average in BF3 @ 3560x1920 with my HD7970 at 1125/6600 and all the settings set to high bar shadows which are set to medium (no HBAO or deferred AA). Ultra settings, albeit without deferred AA and SSAO is still in the low 50's, adding 2x deferred AA drops the average to low-mid 40's. The HD7970 really does shine at very high resolutions, whereas it is pretty meh at 1080p and even 1600p. Other games the performance can vary but in general "high" settings are easily d-able in every game I have tried. The only sticking point is Metro 2033 which utterly crucifies even a overclocked HD7970 at this resolution. Tri Fire overclocked HD7970 would be the absolute minimum for Eyefnity/Ultra settings in that game.
2x580GTXs will work fine for you. I'm running those on 2x27"s and a 30" and flip on the nVidia surround for games. But as other people said, do make sure to get the 3Gb versions.
You being serious?? I love that game to think it is so punishing is horrible. I run it on mostly high settings, but I cant run DX11 as im on a HD4890 still as Im a cashstrapped student. Back to the main point: @OP just to reiterate you will be better off waiting till kepler is out to make a choice on your cards, as you may spend a shitload of cash on two whoppers of cards then a few days later after you have started using them kepler gets released and boom same price MASSIVELY better performance. This slightly happened with my CPU of my last build where I bought the cpu then about a week later it dropped in price by like 20 quid and a faster one was brought in in its place at the same price. I am looking forward to my possible new build this easter (although if I don't get the money im due it might not happen) so for now Im forced to wait a bit and I hope kepler comes out before hen because even if it is worse than the current tahiti offerings it will likely drive down the price a bit. Just wait till the GTX680 comes out to make your choice otherwise you may kick yourself severely. -W
If you are talking about my Metro 2033 comment then yes I am serious. I perhaps should have add that I was talking about achieving 60fps constant when mentioning Tri Fire HD7970 would be required at Eyefinity / DX11 Ultra (maxed) settings with lots of AA. My single 7970 can "run" it at those settings but only manages 20-30fps. Factoring in scaling or around 80% and it is clear that 3 HD7970's would be required to push 60fps constantly Drop a few settings (which make no noticeable difference while actually playing the game) and it is quite enjoyable on a single HD7970.
When I first read this, I thought "Joy!!, finally someone else looking for GPU's to setup nVidia Surround with large panels" then I realised your just scraping the ice with 23~24" displays.... Meanwhile i'm struggling to find anything with enough humph for 7680x1600 I think your quest will be hella lot easier than mine... I'm beginning to give up hope.
Yes yes you would, I tell you I have enough of a nightmare trying to hide all the cables well in the TJ11 with 4 x 8 pins and 2 x 6 pins for the GPU'S, hence why I'm thinking of selling the case
I really need to throw my 7970 through my BF3 Eyefinity benchmark as the latest release drivers have shown big improvements for me at 3560x1920. I didn't try 4xMSAA properly though which was a mistake as the latest patch is meant to improve HD7xxx performance which ultimately means I can't compare apples to apples. I'll give it a go though at 5760x1080. Should be interesting to see how well a single overclocked 7970 stacks up against 2 GTX580.
Resolution of 6048x1080, Ultra settings with 4xAA and HBAO, HD7970 @ 1125/6600: Min - 25.00 (hit once at beginning of benchmark, rest of the benchmark had minimums of 27) Avg - 32.75 Will re-run at 2xAA to see the difference. EDIT: 2xAA results: Min - 24.00 Avg - 38.39 (+17%) I couldn't see any visual difference between these two runs so I would always drop it to 2xAA to get the extra performance. I would probably also drop Post AA to medium as high introduces a little too much blur for my liking.
