Cusomizing and Buying a pc, need advice on graphics etc.

[Card Trick]

First off, I KNOW THAT I WILL SAVE MONEY IF I MAKE ONE MYSELF. I just want to compare certain things so just bear with me and answer my questions please. Im looking at customizing and buying a pc from ibuypower.com and digitalstormonline.com. Both of them offer similar pc's and they are both great but one main difference between them that I noticed was the graphics cards. Im going to get two cards just btw. If i go with ibuypower.com then I have to choose between ATI Radeon HD 5870 - 1GB CrossFire Mode (Dual Cards) VS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 - 1792MB SLI Mode (Dual Cards) OR NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 - 2GB SLI Mode (Dual Cards). OR I can go with digitalstormonline.com and get 2x cross fire quad ATI radeon HD 5970 2 GB instead of what ibuypower offers. Also on ibuypower it says that the ati radeon supports directx 11, but wouldnt all of them support it? Also price doesnt matter right now because I wont be getting it for a while. Thanks in advance.

 

[Yami]

Personally I would go for a single HD5970, it has roughly equal performance to two HD5870s (since that's basically what it is), taking up less room in the process.
Not all of them support DX11, only the new ATi 5*** series support it. Older cards like GTX285 don't as they were designed to.

Btw, if you're not getting it for a while there isn't much point in looking at rigs right now, since hardware can change drastically in a matter of weeks.

 

[bkolk]

Just so you know, nvidia gtx 295 and ati 5970 are already dual gfx cards. They are dual in the fact that they have two gpu chips on one card. I would highly advise against having two of those cards, as that would be in effect 4 gpu chips.

Nvidia gtx 295, and nvidia gtx 285 will not support dx 11.

Nvidia gtx 295 and gtx 285 are old by now and i would advise against getting them. I would recommend one 5970 over (2 ) 5870's. One 5970 is basically two 5870's on one card.

 

[Card Trick]

ok thanks for the advice.

 

[Slaymate]

The 5970 does have (2) GPU's built into one card. And because of this, it will run hotter as the heatsink is cooling 2 gpu's instead of one. This makes it more prone to heat damage. And (2) single gpu cards will usually run slightly faster than (1) 2 gpu card. Plus, if you have (2) video cards and one of them does fail, you can still use the PC with the remaining card. With the 2 gpu card, if it fails your left waiting on the replacement.

I will recommend (2)-5870's