Windows 7: graphics card recomendations?

Im planning a first gaming rig build in a couple ov months ,but am a little lost when it comes to the GC's,some people say 1 larger one and others say 2 smaller ones,please help,I'm going to mounting it on a Asrock z77 ectreme 6 MB,with 16gb venegence ram,with possibly a i5 2500,or maybe a new ivy bridge when they are released?As for case probably a cm stormtrooper,a suitable corsair psu,80g ssd and a 1tb hard drive (unsure on makes/models)and a 36x blue ray dvd burner,every thing is in the planning stages still but graphics cards,for some reason have got me beatIv'e been researching for a while now,but over the last 3 days has been solid research.Iv'e been looking at the Sapphire 11200-01-20G HD7850 2GB GDDR5 OC and the Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti NVIDIA Graphics Card with 3D Surround Ready (PCI-E 2.0, 2GB, GDDR5) and
MSI nVIDIA GTX560Ti OC 880MHz 4200MHz 256Bit DDR5 TWIN FROZR II Graphics Card (1024MB, PCI-E, 2xDVI, 2xHDMI) and finally the Asus nVIDIA SLI GeForce GTX 570 DirectCu II Graphics Card (1.28GB) these are a few options Iv'e looked at,around the £200 mark($320)are any ov these ok or are any ov them to be avoided.Thaks guys for reading and an early thank you for any advise...

Personally, I'd go for the ATI but that's just personal preference. ATI/AMD cards are in bed with AMD processors and likewise with Intel/nVidia, but of course combining them is no problem (but can result in niggling issues infrequently, I've found).

Honestly I wouldn't bother with crossfire or SLI, although some would argue otherwise, IMO the concept is still in its infancy and barely worth your time. It helps systems that would otherwise bottleneck a single higher end card but in a fully high-end rig is virtually useless. Again, all my own opinion.

Working in an electronics retail store which often purchases from the lower end of the reputability scale I would say avoid Palit. Many people have good things to say, but I find that Palit and Inno3D cards come back most frequently.
Sapphire are holding their own but (IMO) not as good as they once were, and ASUS cards are pretty solid. I myself prefer XFX but again, it's largely down to personal preference.


Of the cards you posted I would, as I said, go for the ATI in a heartbeat but if forced (at gunpoint! Yes, I'm that immature) to pick an nVidia then it would easily be the MSI. It's got the number of cores, the speed of both core and memory; and that twin frozr cooler will keep it nicely performing under any further OCing you want to do.

cheers mate to be honest I'd go for nvidia over amd had a few games ov late that don't seem to like my amd card,out ov those choices,from what ive been looking at the msi is wining at the moment in my eyes

I tend to avoid the complexity of having 2 cards. As long as you aren't playing across multi-monitors at extremely high resolutions, you often have no need for a second card.

I have had the best luck myself with Nvidia cards and that is what I tend to use. But I have friends who have had good luck with AMD/ATI, so I am sure you would be fine there too.

I'm running a reference design eVGA GTX 570 and it plays BF3 at high to ultra settings at 1920x1080 as smooth as can be.

I would budget for the best GPU you can afford and just go one card. If you have a PSU with enough horsepower now of later and the available space and slots then you can always Crossfire or SLI later. This is what I just did. I'm firmly in the camp of one better card then two lesser cards. But at the rate the cards advance and drop in price I would leave the SLI or Crossfire later option open and just watch for the card prices to fall. If you can option up for 2 to 3 gb of memory then you will be loving life !

From what I have been researching the msi gtx 560 ti over clocked is the one I'm the most interested in but Iv'e noticed they do a hawx model is there much difference?

I started with one Hawk and now run two in Crossfire and I'm very happy. This single 560 ti or Hawk will far outperform my set up and yes I believe you'll be very happy with the Hawk version but the 2 GB sounds wicked.
http://biz.tigerdirect.com/applicati...551&CatId=3669
http://biz.tigerdirect.com/applicati...041&CatId=3669

hi im using the xfx HD6770 highly recommended from me great card great price (£70-£80 in uk) AMD Radeon

The GTX 570s have come down a lot in price since the release of the new 680 in the UK and can now be had for just over £200 so that is something to bear in mind.

GeForce GTX 570 - Aria Technology

I do so much agree, out of all your options that's the daddy.
Definately just one, you won't need or want more with your proposed setup.