not the wisest upgrade

[Gman]

You're right Gyrene about older games like aces, but with newer ones such as BF3, Skyrim etc, the only way to run max resolution and ultra detail at full fps is either with a very very fast single card like a 690 or 7970 toxic, or else sli or xfire.  I just built a 680 sli system, and had a 690 in it initially for triple monitor.  Sure, one card with the 680 was okay for old stuff, but any really new high detail game on a single 680 with res at 57xx and detail on ultra would drop into the 40 and even 30 fps.  With sli I rarely see below 60.  I think it's you that's been reading old stuff, go to any of the larger hardware sites regarding triple monitor gaming and you'll see the exact same results I'm getting.  What are your system specs?

Also, nearly every popular new game has been pretty decently optimized for sli setups, certainly to the point where sli or xfire is much better than any single card other than the 2 monsters I mentioned.  This is much more pronounced in triple screen, at least that's been my experience so far with the 30 or so games I have tried in both sli, single 680, and the 690 while I had it.

running crossfire or sli video cards does not automatically guarantee the best performance. it will depend on whether the game is cpu dependent or gpu dependent and whether or not the game can take full advantage of dual video cards

I challenge you to give me one game where this is true that's been released in the last year or so, because I haven't found one yet where SLI was slower than just running one of my 680's by itself.   Sure, maybe some tic-tac-toe type of unpopular game may make your statement 100% correct, but not one single title of the 30 or so I've bought this year is this the case. DCS sims, F1 racing 2012, BF3, COD, Skyrim, Shogun Total War, Mechwarrior online, Counterstrike GO, the list is endless where SLI has blown away the best single card, the 690 exempted, in my personal-on my very own system- testing.  I understand what you're saying, and it is even correct to a certain extent, but you're talking about a lot older titles than what most people play now.

As far as the OP and the original question, it's likely a better option to go to the 7950 than 2 6870's in sli, but as I said, it's a close in terms of performance.  Newer DX11 games with tesselation the 7950 will pull away from the 6870 sli, but in Aces High on 3 screens, it'll be close.   It would still be much better to go sli/xfire with 3 screens, albeit not with the 6870, 2 7950's would be MUCH better than just one, whatever Gyrene says.  If you don't believe me, go ahead and buy that 7950, run aces high, an old title comparatively with everything absolutely maxed with full AA and shadows at 89whatever on those 3 screens of yours, and tell me what happens (hint, I already know, as I said earlier I almost bought that same card before i decided to go SLI, and I did it for a reason after testing AH on three screens with it).  Then try a game like BF3, or even the new Mechwarrior online at max res and ultra detail with that 7950 on three screens.  You absolutely WILL NOT be getting max frames, nowhere close to it.  Even with a system exactly like mine, a 3930k overclocked and a 680gtx 4 gb single card, HardOCP's review could only get 50 fps MAX from BF3 or Skyrim on 3 screens, and that was with the video card overclocked.  That's just one example of many of what I'm talking about, go look for yourself if you think I'm mistaken and "reading old material".  I did weeks of reading, research, and testing all the video cards and setups I talked about prior to building mine very recently, and my experience has been exactly the same as all the reviews and tests I've read.  Now, in this particular case, with the OP having a single 6870 with only 1gb of RAM, going to a 7950, especially if its clocked up to close to the 7970 performance, is probably a better choice overall than adding another 6870 for xfire.  But that doesn't mean that xfire isn't the preferable way to go for 3 screen gaming.

As I said a few times now, unless you have a monster single card solution, sli/xfire is the ONLY option to get max performance at max detail and res of any decent new title.  Do a search on Utube for Linus's tech tips.  I went to his little home office/testing place after talking to him at NCIX trying to decide what I should do when I was choosing my parts for my new system.  I tried the 7950, 7970 xfire, 7970 toxic stand alone, 680 gtx 4gb, 680 2 gb, 680 sli, and the 690gtx with many of the games I play, including Aces High.  It was pretty obvious to me that in order to run triple screens I would need to either buy the 690, or go sli/xfire with the next fastest cards in order to max everything out.  BTW, the 7950 on BF3 in ultra detail at 5760 resolution the max fps I ever saw was about 48, and it averaged 35 or less, and that card was overclocked to near 7970 performance.  

with no guarantee that every game will work flawlessly

This is a quote from the OP, which suggest he is playing a lot more games other than Aces High, where a single GPU will get you by on triple screens, but absolutely WILL NOT with newer titles if one is expecting high to max FPS with detail and res maxed out.  The OP sounds like he's figured out what he wants to do, go with the 7950, which is a good choice IMO, but mark my words, he'll be back here posting about how he is thinking about adding a second 7950 for xfire after seeing the performance on his 3 screens if he likes max detail and resolution on newer titles.

[LCADolby]

I wanted to upgrade but my power supply is only 300w.. 

[gyrene81]

You're right Gyrene about older games like aces, but with newer ones such as BF3, Skyrim etc, the only way to run max resolution and ultra detail at full fps is either with a very very fast single card like a 690 or 7970 toxic, or else sli or xfire.  I just built a 680 sli system, and had a 690 in it initially for triple monitor.  Sure, one card with the 680 was okay for old stuff, but any really new high detail game on a single 680 with res at 57xx and detail on ultra would drop into the 40 and even 30 fps.  With sli I rarely see below 60.  I think it's you that's been reading old stuff, go to any of the larger hardware sites regarding triple monitor gaming and you'll see the exact same results I'm getting.  What are your system specs?

Also, nearly every popular new game has been pretty decently optimized for sli setups, certainly to the point where sli or xfire is much better than any single card other than the 2 monsters I mentioned.  This is much more pronounced in triple screen, at least that's been my experience so far with the 30 or so games I have tried in both sli, single 680, and the 690 while I had it.

I challenge you to give me one game where this is true that's been released in the last year or so, because I haven't found one yet where SLI was slower than just running one of my 680's by itself.   Sure, maybe some tic-tac-toe type of unpopular game may make your statement 100% correct, but not one single title of the 30 or so I've bought this year is this the case. DCS sims, F1 racing 2012, BF3, COD, Skyrim, Shogun Total War, Mechwarrior online, Counterstrike GO, the list is endless where SLI has blown away the best single card, the 690 exempted, in my personal-on my very own system- testing.  I understand what you're saying, and it is even correct to a certain extent, but you're talking about a lot older titles than what most people play now.

As far as the OP and the original question, it's likely a better option to go to the 7950 than 2 6870's in sli, but as I said, it's a close call due to the fact that you're using 3 screens.   As I said, a single screen, no brainer.  It would still be much better to go sli/xfire with 3 screens, albeit not with the 6870, 2 7950's would be MUCH better than just one, whatever Gyrene says.  If you don't believe me, go ahead and buy that 7950, run even aces high, an old title comparatively with everything absolutely maxed with full AA and shadows at 89whatever on those 3 screens of yours, and tell me what happens (hint, I already know, as I said earlier I almost bought that same card before i decided to go SLI, and I did it for a reason after testing AH on three screens with it).  Then try a game like BF3, or even the new Mechwarrior online at max res and ultra detail with that 7950 on three screens.  You absolutely WILL NOT be getting max frames, nowhere close to it.  Even with a system exactly like mine, a 3930k overclocked and a 680gtx 4 gb single card, HardOCP's review could only get 50 fps MAX from BF3 or Skyrim on 3 screens, and that was with the video card overclocked.  That's just one example of many of what I'm talking about, go look for yourself if you think I'm mistaken and "reading old material".  I did weeks of reading, research, and testing all the video cards and setups I talked about prior to building mine very recently, and my experience has been exactly the same as all the reviews and tests I've read. 

seriously? i think you're looking for reasons to justify the $1000 you spent on video cards. of course there shouldn't be a drop in frame rates with sli'd 690s. but believe it or not, i've seen reports of it happening, because of driver issues. the facts outside of the sources you use show that a single 7970 or 690 is capable of running any current retail box game on triple monitors just fine. bad drivers and/or incorrect hardware/software configurations can make things not work well.

from what i can tell, aces high has a higher graphics load on full maximum settings than nearly all current retail box games available. the only thing that is "old" is the directx version it uses.

[Gman]

I never sli'd 690's, you misread that someplace, and I don't argue with the graphics "load" of Aces High being very high.  And yes, I've read the reports of fps dropping for unexplained reasons, or driver issues, and have experienced that myself with a few games and in a few odd circumstances.

The bottom line I'm getting at is your statement

running crossfire or sli video cards does not automatically guarantee the best performance. it will depend on whether the game is cpu dependent or gpu dependent and whether or not the game can take full advantage of dual video cards

You're right in a few cases, but certainly not the majority, as I've stated.  I got the opportunity to see a wide variety of GPU's on 3 different platforms, 3770k, 3930k, and 3570k, and with about a dozen different modern titles, and one not so modern (Aces High).  All I've done is share the results, which as I've said, pretty much mirrored everything I've read, which you said was "old information".  

single 7970 or 690 is capable of running any current retail box game on triple monitors just fine

That's exactly what I've said.

either with a very very fast single card like a 690 or 7970 toxic, or else sli or xfire

where SLI has blown away the best single card, the 690 exempted

unless you have a monster single card solution, sli/xfire is the ONLY option to get max performance at max detail and res of any decent new title

Just in case you missed me saying this the first 3 times.

Outside of a single monster GPU like the 690 or 7970Toxic, sli/xfire is required on 3 monitors to run max detail at max res/5760 with newer titles like BF3 for example.  Look familiar? This will be the 4th time I've stated this same thing.  A 690 will run max/ultra/3screens yes, but that's essentially 2 GPU's performance in one card.  The 7970, only if its the 6gb toxic, which is sort of the AMD counter to the 690, but it's a fair bit slower than the nvidia card.  So you're essentially agreeing with me, as the 690 is very much like having 2 680's sli'd, and that was my experience with the one I owned, and the 2 680's I have right now.  Any card that is slower than those two however, like say a 680 2gb or a single 7970, the facts are that it WILL run "just fine" on a triple monitor setup, if you turn down some of the detail.  If you do not, the facts are that a single 7970 3gb WILL NOT run a game like BF3 at ultra detail levels on three screens, in fact it won't even hit 50fps except in rare circumstances, with the high 30's and low 40's being typical, and I've seen this both at Linus's tech shop and with my own system when I've tried running just a single card when I've suspected that the sli isn't performing right, and disabled/uninstalled one of the cards.

[ToeTag]

Not following you.

I would like to know what you're doing as I am looking to upgrade very soon too.  I figure you know what you're doing and also building a machine that can run AH at max settings and so on.   

[Skuzzy]

I would like to know what you're doing as I am looking to upgrade very soon too.  I figure you know what you're doing and also building a machine that can run AH at max settings and so on.  

Ahhh.  I really do not think I can post the details of my build as it could be construed as an endorsement of product.  I have to be careful about that as an employee of Hitech Creations.  It is unfortunate.

I am not concerned about what the video card is as I stated, the primary purpose of my computer is video editing.  I do not play any games with it.  I cannot play Aces High at home as I do not have enough desk space for a joystick setup.  I would test Aces High on it, just to see what it could do, but I could not play it.

Gman, I hate to tell you this, but there really is no such thing as optimizing a game for SLI/Crossfire.  If anyone says that it is strictly marketing blather.  The only optimization you can do is with the profiles.

SLI/Crossfire do give a performance boost, but it is less than 25% over a single card.  I could see more of a boost if one monitor was connected to one card and the other two monitors connected to the other card.  This configuration would allow the two cards to render to the monitors.  This could give a big boost in performance over a single card, but I do not know if anyone is doing that.

The big resolution causes larger frame buffers to be allocated.  If all the monitors are connected through one video card, then the speed the monitor images are filled at is going to be the same, regardless of the number of video cards hooked together, as the frame buffers are where the images are drawn from.  

The only gain is the rendering of each frame before the frame buffers are filled.  What performance gain to be had there will depend on the method used for rendering the frame.

By the way, Aces High has a pretty sophisticated graphics engine.  Pretty graphics do not a good graphics engine make.  Pretty graphics is all about the artwork and data used.  We use little data to do what we do, which is pretty remarkable when you consider how good our models look compared to other games requiring ten times more data to do the same thing.  Just saying.

[Gman]

I understand and agree with all of that.  But the numbers are what they are, in games like BF3 using a single card like a 7970 or lower end 680 the fps is 50 max and 40 average or less, but with my 680 sli the fps is 60 almost constantly.  That's more than just marketing fluff, at least to me.  So in the case of triple monitor high res ultra detail, the performance gain is much higher than 25%, more like 45, but I agree that with some games or especially with just one monitor the gains are less.  And I was referring to all the different profiles when I meant "optimization", as you said.  I realize the drivers aren't specifically changed or improved with sli/xfire 100% in mind, or 3d/triple monitor for that matter.  I never thought to check the percentage of performance boost from one setup to another down to the exact number, but as I said, I got to see dozens of variations of cpu/mb platforms and over a half dozen different current video cards, both single monitor and triple, sli/xfire and stand alone.  The sense I got is that with very high end graphics (I know I know, to define this is hard to do, but I'll just keep sticking to BF3/Skyrim/etc) games on triple monitors at max detail, sli/xfire gives more of a boost to frames per second than I saw with single monitor and the same games.  In fact, any of the cards as I recall, on any of the platforms, would run BF3 at 1980x and ultra detail at 60fps almost constantly, so telling how much boost sli/xfire would give is not really possible from just watching an fps counter.  On 3 screens however, it was very plain to see, and a single GPU so long as it wasn't the 690 could visibly be seen to start chugging/stuttering at times, and had the low fps I stated before of 33-40 on average, and 50fps as an absolute and very rare max seen.  Guru3d has a test of the 680, 680 sli, and the 690 running BF3 on the Swordbreaker level with 16xAF and 4xMSAA in Ultra, and the 680 is 59 fps avg, the 690 is 97 fps avg, and the gtx 4gb (8gb total with 2 cards) 680sli was the fastest at 105 avg, and that was on a single screen.  So in some cases, usually on crazy ultra detail with the fizzy eye candy games like BF3/COD/Skyrim, even on single monitor the gains you can get from sli are pretty impressive, at least to me.  I realize that when the hours long torture test are done with some of the gpu/cpu testing programs like 3dmark/etc/etc that the gains sli/xfire get drops down to that 25% kind of value, but in my experience the real world boost is higher than this for the games I'm playing, particularly with multiple screens. 

That info regarding AH is interesting,  and I'd love to hear more details regarding the ins and outs of how it works.  I agree about the models, I've always felt that AH graphics are fantastic and it bugs me when I read others comments about them being wah out of date.  Anyone who hasn't seen Aces High on 3 screens at absolute max detail and full anti aliasing (I know Skuzzy's feelings about needing AA, but it still looks cool cranked up all the way to the max) is really missing out on what the game is capable of.

One thing regarding the AH engine and graphics capability, and this is WAY off topic, but I often think of this:  Why doesn't Dale consider doing a "Space" massively multiplayer game on the AH engine.  After that little Space ship he made during the convention that year, it got me to thinking.  A Battlestar galactica game, with the same motherships but with models like battlestars, and Viper's and other fighters based on that con/fighter, along with support ships like our fleets etc would capture a HUGE audience and be a hell of a lot of fun IMO.  I think HTC easily has the chops to make a game like this as it would be very similar in the base coding to AH2 I would think, and be really popular, a simple yet fun and fast action space combat MMO game that would tide everyone over for a few years until Chris Roberts new wingcommander type thingy is out.  Heck, even if it was free to play, it would get Aces High a lot of exposure and new players I bet, and if it was even a few dollars a month, or a small one time fee, it would give HTC a decent influx of $ to use for those of us playing the really important game (AH2 obviously, hah).

[MrRiplEy[H]]

A Battlestar galactica game, with the same motherships but with models like battlestars, and Viper's and other fighters based on that con/fighter, along with support ships like our fleets etc would capture a HUGE audience and be a hell of a lot of fun IMO.

Yeah he could start light too, just remove the planet and turn clock to night. CV could float in space and play-be battlestar while N1Ks could play the role of Vipers with no need for FM changes... 

First issue would be licensing and second issue marketing - playerbase doesn't come from thin air.

[Skuzzy]

Gman, in all those benchmark comparisons, did they provide the amount, type, and speed (not clock rate, but the actual RAM timings) of the video RAM for each card?

You can take two of the same model of video cards, using the same clock rates (GPU and RAM) and have vast differences in performance.  Typically a video card with more RAM uses slower RAM as it is a manufacturing issue to condense RAM to high levels without sacrificing performance.

Typically, when you compare a 4GB video card to a 1GB version of the same card, the overall performance is going to be better with the 1GB video card, not the 4GB video card.  This holds true if the game being tested is not asset bound.  Most benchmarks are not going to be asset bound.

Once you go beyond the physical RAM of the video card, all cards will tank in performance.

[Noir]

Thanks everyone for the inputs, I think I will be getting the ASUS 7950 DirectCuII.