Best Performance 3D Video Cards

AMD had three months without competition from NVIDIA but the GeForce GTX 680 made its debut and it is a huge improvement over the past GeForce GTX 580. The Kepler graphics core makes some significant changes which greatly improve efficiency such that the card only needs two 6-pin PCI-Express power supply and a recommended 550W power supply. It also is the first of the NVIDIA cards to support NV Surround via a single card. Performance has greatly improved and even tops the Radeon HD 7970 in most cases. It should be able to run a 2560x1600 resolution display at ultra high detail levels with filtering enabled on all modern games. Pricing is roughly $500 which is $50 less at launch than the Radeon HD 7970 but AMD will likely adjust their prices now that their is competition. Connectors include two DVI, one DisplayPort and one HDMI.

While the AMD Radeon HD 7970 is the fastest card, both it and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 carry very high price tags. AMD recently released their new mainstream Radeon 7800 series cards to replace the venerable AMD's Radeon HD 6970 that are now disappearing from stocks. Performance as a whole is pretty much as good or slightly better than the 6970 which means gameplay capabilities up to 2560x1600 without any problems with ultra details and some filtering effects. One advantage that the 7870 has over the past 6970 is the size. With its smaller graphics core and more efficient design, it will actually fit in more cases but it still is two slots wide. Connectors include two mini-DisplayPort, one HDMI and one DVI-D. It still requires at least a 500W power supply with two 6-pin PCI-Express graphics connectors. Priced around $360.

The pricing of the new Radeon HD 7000 series cards is frankly not that good because of the lack of competing NVIDIA 600 series cards. With their current pricing, those looking to do a CrossFire setup to get extra performance at a lower cost are probably best served by the past generation of cards. AMD's Radeon HD 6870 graphics card offers some surprising value and performance. The graphics card can easily handle most games up to the popular 1920x1080 resolutions without any problems all while being extremely efficient. Put two of these together and it offers a solid performance boost and great EyeFinity support for up to three monitors. The Sapphire FleX version of the Radeon HD 6870 corrects a big issue with the original design that only supported DisplayPort monitors when running a triple monitor setup. This version can hook up to three DVI based monitors with the two DVI ports and the third through a supplied HDMI to DVI adapter. Power requirements are for a 750W or higher power supply with four 6-pin PCI-Express graphics power connectors between the two cards. Priced around $200 per card.

AMD has yet to release a new dual graphics processor card based on the Radeon HD 7000 series processrs and relying on the older AMD's Radeon HD 6990. The primary reason for getting this dual processor card is for the EyeFinity feature to span a game across three high resolution displays. The 4GB of graphics memory allows full resolutions with some filtering depending upon the game. Sapphire also includes a number of adapters for hooking up the mini-DisplayPort outputs to HDMI and DVI based monitors. The card is based upon two Radeon HD 6970 graphics cores running at slightly lower resolutions effectively creating a CrossFire solution on a single card. Power requirements are a bit step at 750W or more for the power supply with two 8-pin PCI-Express graphics power connectors required. Priced around $1000.

Looking to put together a multiple card solution that offers the performance near that of a GeForce GTX 590? That is exactly what using two GeForce GTX 570 cards can achieve. Using the EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked makes that even easier with their core clocks pushed to nearly 800MHz. This allows the two cards to drive multiple displays with little trouble or a single high resolution display with full effects and filters without hurting frame rates. Additionally, if a game supports PhysX, one card can be used for graphics while the other for physics. Power supply requirements are pretty steep with roughly 800W or higher and four 6-pin PCI-Express graphics power connectors split between the two cards. Price per card is roughly $320.

NVIDIA's dual graphics processor card offers a lot of performance but falters due to the more limited 3GB of memory. When running at very high resolutions over multiple displays, the memory restricts the ability to use filters and effects. It still does quite well, just not as well or as efficiently as AMD's solution. Still, there are times where the NVIDIA solution does an improved job especially if the game supports PhysX. Power requirements are still quite high with the need of a 700W power supply and two 8-pin PCI-Express graphics power connectors. Priced between $750 to $1000.