so. i currently have just a single 560ti and i really want to upgrade. the other thing i want is to be able to play multi monitor surround at a resolution of 5760x1080. so i was thinking about dual 660ti's at first, but then i realised about the vram ammount and bandwith limitations. so, since that was kinda my butget limit, i looked to see what the red cam had in store for me. i decided on xfire 7950's. then, my friend said that there wasnt any point until i actually have the multi monitors and that the newest gen cards compared to the 560ti is barely any performence difference. (by barely any, he means like anything below 40%). then my uncle said, do what ever you want, but remember the ati drivers are a concern. so heres my plan:
since i only have enough power for just 1 gpu atm, i will get a single 7950 to check out the drivers and the performence of one. also im gonna OC & OV it. then, when i have the money, i will get my new monitors, new psu and if the 7950 is good enough an second one! if its not, hen ill sell it and get either 2x660ti's, or try to stretch my budget to 2x670's.
You can't really get that much better than a pair of OC'd 7950's. AMD's Eyefinity technology is more mature than NVidia's surround, CFX scales pretty well, and the GCN architecture excels at high resolutions.
Drivers are a non-issue; I don't recall any driver issues with Radeon cards, and I've been using them since the 4000 series. Maybe some stone-aged gamers, or nvidia fanboys will say Radeon drivers suck, but that's just not true. especially with the updated driver release schedule (as needed vs monthly). The last few Radeon driver updates have been highly praised for bringing rather noticeable performance boosts in popular games.
You're uncle hasn't gotten a clue if he thinks 40% is barely an improvement (I'm not saying that's the case however); 40% is a massive improvement, almost ground breaking. This generations mainstream options offers the same performance as last generations top-tier enthusiast options (7870/660Ti >= GTX580). Whether or not that is 40%, I don't know, and I'm too lazy to figure out the math.
Stick with what you got for now. Buy your monitors when you get the chance and only after you buy your extra monitors is when you should think about upgrading your PSU and getting your new GPU/GPUs.
If you commit to a GPU now, you will be stuck with it till you get your tripple screen upgrade. If you save it till later you have more options when it comes to choosing your new hardware.
mm... not nesacerily (sorry if that's spelt wrong). if i dont like the card, or it doesnt perform well enough then i can sell it and get a diferent one. simples :)