Basically, I am in a hard place trying to decide on graphic's cards and cant make up my mind so I am asking for some advice. I have 1k and change...
 
GTX Titan. I can only afford one and it looks like ya need two to be decent.
 
2xGTX 680 FTW 4GB. Classifieds seem like a waste of money without EV bot. I know I could soft mod the connector on, but its not worth the hassle IMO. I think this version would be ok and could probably clock to Classified stock anyways.
http://www.evga.com/Produ...aspx?pn=04G-P4-3687-KR
 
2xGTX 670 FTW + 4GB. Best bang for the buck and leaves me with some pocket change. Easily hits 680 speeds from what I've seen here on the forums.
http://www.evga.com/Produ...aspx?pn=04G-P4-3687-KR
 
2xMSI 7970 3GB Lightning Boost Editions. Now normally I would not go AMD but the 7970's are impressing me as of lately with the new drivers. 3GB mem makes me a little worried though, I kind of like to get the most out of my investments. These cards are not available in the U.S but I can have them shipped from the U.K. I have read reviews and they clock easily to 1250-1300mhz on the core with voltage tweaks. 
http://www.msi.com/produc...7970-Lightning-BE.html
http://www.itproportal.co...w-fastest-hd-7970-yet/
 
So I am in no rush, but would like some input on these choices. I can build my rig around these cards so that does not really matter. I game on single monitor 1920x1080, but will be upgrading the monitor as time goes on. This is my last build for the next three years. After upgrading every 8 months for the past 5 years I am done with that game and really am just looking to actually get the life out of the hardware before I retire them.  
 
Thanks

I think a better investment would be to spend that 1k on a GPU AND a monitor.  Because anything more than a GTX 680 is complete and utter overkill at 1920 x 1080.  Hell, even a GTX 680 is overkill for the majority of enthusiast gamers at just 1080p: the only games that will challenge it are ArmA 2 (and ArmA 3 probably will NOT from what we've seen) and Skyrim with mods such as ALL of these, but most people hardly use any mods for some odd reason.  Crysis 3 might give it a run for its money but I'm not sure.
 
I recommend a GTX 680 4GB and a 27" 1440p IPS monitor.  A 4GB GTX 680 is sufficient to max out most games at that res, and in the future you could just pick up a second.  A good alternative to this would be dual GTX 660 Ti 3GB cards and the same monitor, but I'm not a fan of SLI.  Of course you could always just get one GTX 680 or GTX 670 and stick with your 1080p monitor, and dominate every single game.  

boredgunner

I think a better investment would be to spend that 1k on a GPU AND a monitor.  Because anything more than a GTX 680 is complete and utter overkill at 1920 x 1080.  Hell, even a GTX 680 is overkill for the majority of enthusiast gamers at just 1080p: the only games that will challenge it are ArmA 2 (and ArmA 3 probably will NOT from what we've seen) and Skyrim with mods such as ALL of these, but most people hardly use any mods for some odd reason.  Crysis 3 might give it a run for its money but I'm not sure.

I recommend a GTX 680 4GB and a 27" 1440p IPS monitor.  A 4GB GTX 680 is sufficient to max out most games at that res, and in the future you could just pick up a second.  A good alternative to this would be dual GTX 660 Ti 3GB cards and the same monitor, but I'm not a fan of SLI.  Of course you could always just get one GTX 680 or GTX 670 and stick with your 1080p monitor, and dominate every single game.  

 
I run a hell of a lot of mods. Actually, on every game I possibly can . I killed my 690's 2gb on 1080p and it def. was not enough horsepower for my liking. 

btw atm the 7970 it's a better bang 4 bucks...
no one can argue that!

I'd vote for a pair of GTX680 4GB unless you can get a pair of Sapphire's 6GB HD7970's.  For a review, one by Tom's Hardware.  At some point in the next three years, 4k will be affordable and you'll want something to withstand the resolution and not loose too many frame rates.  Quad 1080p screens = one 2160p display in terms of total pixel area.
 
You can expect performance in the 40's with today's games at around 4k resolution with a pair of hardware like GTX680/HD7970.
 
But if you aren't in a hurry, then I'd recommend waiting for AMD's upcoming "Malta", in case it affects pricing and it doesn't hurt to save a few bucks.
 

ledzppln6
You don't need 4gb of VRAM for the FTW models at 1080p. I've yet to see mine go past 1.3 gb.

Careful, games not even three years old didn't need 600MB on 1080p-- it is the game that decides Vram need, not resolution.  Thesedays games can reach and breach 2GB even at 1080p, and since time doesn't stop here, more Vram is just future-proof for the timespan that his next upgrade is intended for.  

MSI 7970's get my vote.

I just posted this on another thread:
Well would you like the opinion of a guy who has 2 decades of AMD/ATI experience?
AMD hasn't been doing so well at drivers, ever since the branding take-over. They often have released drivers that have 'broke' my game(s), and took months to fix them again. First a bit of history is necessary: I've just been so unlucky about my vid card purchase timing that when I bought my vid cards, in the last 5 years, AMD was almost a no-brainer choice. For instance when I bought my 5850's just over three years ago AMD was the only card that fully supported the new DirectX (10 or 11, can't remember which); and that was a big deal since there were great graphics improvements in the new DirectX at that time. But where am I going with this? Bear with me, it is worth the background explanation.

Using the 5850s I noticed that some of the ATI users who had 4xxx series cards were already complaining about lack of support. They claimed AMD had quit updating drivers for them, despite AMD claims to the contrary; that their games that worked before were now broken using any of the newer drivers (I seen this on the Guru3D forums, and they recommended certain old driver versions). Then I bought two 7870s about a year ago, while having problems W/the 5850s in Skyrim; Crossfire didn't work, and even had gfx glitches without Xfire. So I moved the 5850s to my wife's new computer build (Eve). By this time, I had figured out that the best driver for my 5850s and Skyrim were CCC were 10.4! CCC was then up to 11.3 (or 11.2?), which was known to totally break Skyrim. And by the way, CCC install manager will not allow you to revert to an older driver - the only way is use Driver Sweeper including a session in Windows safe mode. However, the 11.1 drivers worked great W/my 7970s.


By now you may be seeing what I am getting at: IMO AMD had dropped 5xxx series driver support just two years after the first 5xxx cards were released, despite what they claimed. Just like what I had read, what the owners of 4xxx cards had claimed on the forums; but two or three years later in time. I have to wonder if I will begin to have problems getting my 7870s to work right in just a year's time from now, because of lack of proper driver support. It could be because of AMD/ATI policy of "one driver fits all" as opposed to individual driver downloads for each series, I'm not sure. Or it could just be that AMD puts all video cards over two years old out-to-pasture so-to-speak, unofficially, as they don't want to expend the resources to support them any more.

Also, I have heard a lot of complaints in the past year from series 6xxx owners, complaining that AMD has hung them out-to-dry so-to-speak. They claim that the 6xxx series are flawed design-wise, and AMD can't get the new drivers to work right on the 7xxx series and the 6xxx series simultaneously. That if they fixed the drivers for the 6xxx series that the 7xxx won't work right - again flaw of not releasing separate drivers for specific series cards. Here we go again, SOS. Do you want to take a chance on that happening to you in two years?



What's more, have you been watching the industry news lately about AMD? It appears they are in dire straights. It's entirely possible that AMD will not be around in two or three years to update the drivers!

That said, AMDs current 13.1 driver is awesome for the 7xxx series. There were some new optimizations that increased the render speed of many games, many by >10%, and fixed incompatibilities W/7xxx cards and X58 and X79 motherboards! Including fixing the use of EyeFinity (multiple monitors) in Tri-Fire (3-way crossfire) on X79 systems - which has been broken for a year now!
 
Asus ROG Rampage series forum: AMD Response to Trifire Eyefinity issue on the Rampage IV

Well why did it take them >1yr. to get there? Buyer beware. I've been watching numerous threads like this over the years, talking about the lack-of-support for their gaming problems. And did you ever go look for AMD video forums? AMD don't even host a forum (that I can find). All AMD forums are third-party. IMHO Nvidia is the only way to go this year.