My buddy is looking to get a new gpu and he is willing to spend about $500.
Would it be better to buy 2 gpus to sli or one big monster one.
Hes upgrading from a 2 gig gtx 550 and is planing on using a 32 in hdtv as a monitor.
Any suggestions or other input?
I would say that one GPU is always better than 2 (most of the time). What will your friend be doing? Im no expert on GPU's but I have some knowledge of them.
For the most part he will just be gaming heavily.
a 660ti or a HD 7950 will give the best bang for the buck for high performace
the dude wants to spend 500 bucks...get a 7970...369 on newegg. and don't go playing games on a 32" TV...input lag will be horrible and the pixel density will be shit...
Yes buy a Card like a 7970 or GTX 680 for like $350+ and spend the rest on a decent monitor to play games on.
Or, get a 7950 and a sweet tri-monitor set up!
But what's the rest of his config? We might be making bottlenecks with our suggestions
Depends on his intentions. If he only desires to game I would recommend a 7970 (provided he has a CPU capable of complementing this graphical beast) and save the extra $100 and upgrade another part of his system if needed; such as adding an SSD, extra Hard Drive, more fans or a better CPU cooler. If he also desires to utilize his machine to edit videos in Premier, go with a 680, he will adore CUDA; while still getting near identical performance to the 7970. However do bear in mind that selecting the latter will raise the cost an extra $80, leaving him with only 30 spare bucks to upgrade other said components.