Need some opinions again :D

[StormUndomiel]

Alright,my second post on this forum. So,a while ago I had posted saying that I was doing a build (first time ever) and I had posted the specs. For those of you who saw it and gave me input (thanks again!),it looked like this:

 

Intel Core i5 4590 3.3Ghz Quad-Core Processor

MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition ATX LGA1150 Motherboard

Kingston HyperX Fury White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

EVGA Geforce GTX 970 4GB FTW ACX 2.0 Video Card

NZXT Phantom 240 ATX Mid Tower Case

Corsair CSM 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi Modular ATX Power Supply

Acer R240HY bidx 60hz 23.8" Monitor

Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical

Mouse

I got some great help here,and now a couple of things have changed,so I'd really like a few more opinions from the experienced people here. Firstly,I have purchased an Intel i5 4690k instead,and Asus Z97-E motherboard,and a WD Caviar Blue HD. The ram will most likely be the same,except black,and the case will also remain the same.However,although I believed that this was pretty solid,I couldn't resist the temptation to keep researching,since you never know if/when you'll find something better,and I'm sort of anxious that I'll make a decision that I'll regret later.

Now,my main number one question has to do with the gpu;originally,I said I preferred Nvidia to AMD,but now I may have had a change of heart. From what I've read,it seems like the R9 390 may do very well for what I want- ultra modded Skyrim as number one,followed by Mass Effect and GTA V,and a few others- and I'm pretty much at a crossroad right now about which to go with. The GTX 970 is of course a great performing gpu,but the R9's specs make it seem like it'll be able to pull off modded Skyrim better,especially having all that extra vram. I understand that a lot of you might say "The r9 probably doesn't have the horsepower to utilize all that ram anyway,so it'd be somewhat redundant to get it",but I feel like better to be safe and have extra than be sorry and possibly have too little. I'd love some advice from 390 users for this. Also,again about Skyrim,I know its said to be more of an Nvidia game (especially when it comes to ENB),but how bad would it be if I did go AMD?

Second question,what would you all say as a minimum power supply for a 390? I know the 550 that I've stated above isn't gonna cut it,so how much more? Is 650 cutting it too close? 700-750 maybe? I don't wanna go crazy getting something too overpowered per say,but I do need something with some headroom to it. Suggestions?

Finally,monitor. So this became a little bit of a debate on the previous thread,but I appreciated the input. I had also stated that I would be getting an HP Pavilion monitor,but again,research is tempting.I'm now looking into the possibility of an ultrawide monitor,but I'm not entirely sure if its worth it. I would be getting it in 2560x1080p resolution to be clear. I know it would be more immersive,which is great to me,but would the GTX 970 or the R9 390 be able to pump out that extra little bit and still maintain decent gameplay with the games I've listed above? Should I just stick to 16:9 instead? (and I understand that not many games don't support that resolution,but I'm looking up ways to work around that)

So that's all for now,sorry for the wall of text,and thanks in advance!

[obobski]

I don't know where the rumor that Skyrim "needs nVidia" comes from, but it's not true - AMD cards do just fine with Skyrim and other Gamebryo/Creation games. The R9 390 is a re-packaged R9 290 (the 290 series became the 390 series with slight clock bumps and extra VRAM; this isn't "fraud" or "a big scandal" or anything like that, and nVidia has been doing the exact same thing for almost twenty years with various products); why bring this up? So you can look at benchmarks that only feature the 290 and get more info. My 290X has no problems running Skyrim at 1080p on Ultra (it will do 144 FPS, but the game is unstable/problematic >60 FPS) - the 390 should be the same. The VRAM thing isn't even worth talking about - nothing uses 8GB of VRAM (and no, you can't somehow mod Skyrim to "break that barrier" - it physically will NEVER happen for Skyrim, or any other 32-bit application); there's a lot of mythology about "modern games" (you know, from 2010 or 2011) needing insane amounts of VRAM (multiple GB to hundreds of GB) and it just isn't true. Skyrim requires 512MB of VRAM on a GeForce 8, and will run on 256MB - you can go find videos on YouTube of 7900GTX 512MBs running it on Ultra (at 20-30 FPS). It just isn't all that demanding of a game by modern standards. Putting 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM on a card right now is basically a marketing stunt, since "they" can't offer significant improvements in GPU performance, and its unlikely that when games come out that use 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM fully, none of the modern cards will be able to hack it. GPU Computing stuff is another story, but that's not gaming (and this may actually be a minor reason that some higher-end cards are coming with extra VRAM).

 

As far as GTX 970 vs R9 390, it's kind of a toss-up performance wise. Both are very good, both will do very well with Skyrim (and honestly so will basically any other high end card of the last 6-7 years; again, it isn't this unslayable monster that requires a 30GHz dodecacore CPU, 2048GB of octal-channel DDR6 @ 4666MHz, 16-way SLI-EX with 48GB GTX Titan XXLs, and a 10-way RAID0 m.2 SSD array just to run at full minimum 512x384 in 16-bit color; machines from 2011 (when it came out) could run it maxed, and machines older than that could run it maxed, and so forth - you can load a silly number of mods onto it and completely butcher performance, just like you could with Oblivion and Morrowind, and while a reasonable amount of modding can justify a somewhat faster machine (than what would be needed to "run it maxed") after a point you're just throwing good money after bad and its better to (imho) give up on the "just one more" graphics mods and enjoy the game for what it is (and accept what it isn't)). Personally I'm very happy with my 290X, and while the GTX 900 series has various issues (e.g. nVidia lied about DX12 support, the 970 memory bug, etc) none of that matters for DX9 gaming (or honestly even for modern DX10/11 games); nVidia's "sure we lied but it doesn't matter and that's why we could get away with lying" line is unfortunately true (and I'm not saying, at all, that modern GCN will be a magic bullet for whenever DX12 games finally roll around - sure it supports them, but it may be like Radeon 9800 in the past; it was good for a year or two into the DX9 era and then completely overwhelmed by performance requirements). Point being, the 900 series can be just as viable a candidate, especially if you don't care about any of nVidia's anti-competitive business practices and go into it knowing all of the caveats it comes with.

 

Using Fallout 4 as a comparison, the 970 scores *slightly* better, but they're all in that "over 60 FPS so who cares" category (if someone knows whether or not FO4 actually "works" with higher frame-rates and can comment that'd be awesome):

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

 

Skyrim is a lot less demanding, and will be running maxed either way. It is impossible to really speculate or guess what various mod configurations will do - it's reasonable to assume you can run "a lot" of mods, but you will eventually hit a point where you're either asking the game to be more than it is, and performance will be impacted by that.

 

As far as the PSU, an honest 550W would be fine with a 4690 and 390 (based on my own measurements and review data), so would 650W, or 750W, or 1250W, etc. The system will only draw what it needs (which will be around 70-100W at idle and around 200-400W at load (depending on load; modern GPUs (be it nVidia or AMD) are very good at dynamic power management)), and modern PSUs are efficient enough that "surplus capacity" doesn't mean significant surplus heat or waste power. If you're thinking you might go SLI or CrossFire in the future, I'd suggest a 750-1000W range PSU simply so you aren't replacing it when you add the second GPU, but if that's off the table, a quality 550W PSU should give you no problems. Personally I like the idea of "headroom" because it allows expansion with less fuss - say you want to add more hard-drives, or another GPU, or whatever; you've got surplus capacity on-tap. And since we're well into the era of 80-plus, that surplus capacity doesn't come at the cost of significant extra heat/waste/noise/etc.

 

If this mostly sounds like "it doesn't matter flip a coin" that's because it partially is - you're looking at generally excellent hardware on all fronts, and basically have to decide between different companies or brands based on non-performance items.

 

As far as the monitor - I'd take some time to browse WSGF's games database and look at games you like or play. Weird resolutions and ARs usually means more quirks, for example Mass Effect 1 never properly detected my 2048x1152 (thats 16:9, DC2K full-frame) monitor, so I could either "live with" 1920x1080 or use a resolution hack to enable the higher setting. I had similar experiences with a 2560x1600 monitor - its not that Windows ever has a problem (Windows generally doesn't care - whatever crazy display solution you can create, Windows can probably support), but games will either not natively support the resolution, or the UI won't scale right, or whatever. Getting into non-standard ARs produces significantly more problems (and I know Mass Effect will be one such problem, since the UI elements are fixed-aspect and won't scale properly), and going to "more wider" will be "more worse" with Vert- games (like Mass Effect), because you will get an even smaller viewport (ignoring that ME won't draw its UI correctly). Now, those ultra-wide monitors can do pillar-boxed 1080p but if that's what you're primarily going to have to live with, why not just get the 1080p monitor?

 

Here's the three games you specifically mentioned on WSGF - look at the example images, read what they have to say, and spend the time to search other games as well;

 

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/en (Skyrim, like Oblivion before it, *is* Hor+ and will work nicely with WS resolutions)

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/mass-effect (Vert-, meaning the wider your monitor gets, the smaller the viewport gets)

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/grand-theft-auto-v/en (Hor+ but has fixed 16:9 UI and cutscenes)

 

Having toyed around with a few ultra-wide displays in the past, they're certainly spiffy looking, and when content supports them nicely (e.g. running 2.35:1 video, or Hor+ games like Skyrim) they do very well and look very good, but the added compatibility quirks and issues with Vert- games is a big turn-off for me; I say let someone else be the early adopter. Performance wise I doubt 2560x1080 vs 1920x1080 is going to be anything worth writing home about, so if you're after the ultra-wide, that shouldn't be a problem (now, if you go after a 4K ultrawide that runs at 4096x2160 or thereabouts, that's another discussion entirely).

[StormUndomiel]

I don't know where the rumor that Skyrim "needs nVidia" comes from, but it's not true - AMD cards do just fine with Skyrim and other Gamebryo/Creation games. The R9 390 is a re-packaged R9 290 (the 290 series became the 390 series with slight clock bumps and extra VRAM; this isn't "fraud" or "a big scandal" or anything like that, and nVidia has been doing the exact same thing for almost twenty years with various products); why bring this up? So you can look at benchmarks that only feature the 290 and get more info. My 290X has no problems running Skyrim at 1080p on Ultra (it will do 144 FPS, but the game is unstable/problematic >60 FPS) - the 390 should be the same. The VRAM thing isn't even worth talking about - nothing uses 8GB of VRAM (and no, you can't somehow mod Skyrim to "break that barrier" - it physically will NEVER happen for Skyrim, or any other 32-bit application); there's a lot of mythology about "modern games" (you know, from 2010 or 2011) needing insane amounts of VRAM (multiple GB to hundreds of GB) and it just isn't true. Skyrim requires 512MB of VRAM on a GeForce 8, and will run on 256MB - you can go find videos on YouTube of 7900GTX 512MBs running it on Ultra (at 20-30 FPS). It just isn't all that demanding of a game by modern standards. Putting 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM on a card right now is basically a marketing stunt, since "they" can't offer significant improvements in GPU performance, and its unlikely that when games come out that use 4 or 6 or 8 or 12GB of VRAM fully, none of the modern cards will be able to hack it. GPU Computing stuff is another story, but that's not gaming (and this may actually be a minor reason that some higher-end cards are coming with extra VRAM).

 

As far as GTX 970 vs R9 390, it's kind of a toss-up performance wise. Both are very good, both will do very well with Skyrim (and honestly so will basically any other high end card of the last 6-7 years; again, it isn't this unslayable monster that requires a 30GHz dodecacore CPU, 2048GB of octal-channel DDR6 @ 4666MHz, 16-way SLI-EX with 48GB GTX Titan XXLs, and a 10-way RAID0 m.2 SSD array just to run at full minimum 512x384 in 16-bit color; machines from 2011 (when it came out) could run it maxed, and machines older than that could run it maxed, and so forth - you can load a silly number of mods onto it and completely butcher performance, just like you could with Oblivion and Morrowind, and while a reasonable amount of modding can justify a somewhat faster machine (than what would be needed to "run it maxed") after a point you're just throwing good money after bad and its better to (imho) give up on the "just one more" graphics mods and enjoy the game for what it is (and accept what it isn't)). Personally I'm very happy with my 290X, and while the GTX 900 series has various issues (e.g. nVidia lied about DX12 support, the 970 memory bug, etc) none of that matters for DX9 gaming (or honestly even for modern DX10/11 games); nVidia's "sure we lied but it doesn't matter and that's why we could get away with lying" line is unfortunately true (and I'm not saying, at all, that modern GCN will be a magic bullet for whenever DX12 games finally roll around - sure it supports them, but it may be like Radeon 9800 in the past; it was good for a year or two into the DX9 era and then completely overwhelmed by performance requirements). Point being, the 900 series can be just as viable a candidate, especially if you don't care about any of nVidia's anti-competitive business practices and go into it knowing all of the caveats it comes with.

 

Using Fallout 4 as a comparison, the 970 scores *slightly* better, but they're all in that "over 60 FPS so who cares" category (if someone knows whether or not FO4 actually "works" with higher frame-rates and can comment that'd be awesome):

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/fallout_4_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,7.html

 

Skyrim is a lot less demanding, and will be running maxed either way. It is impossible to really speculate or guess what various mod configurations will do - it's reasonable to assume you can run "a lot" of mods, but you will eventually hit a point where you're either asking the game to be more than it is, and performance will be impacted by that.

 

As far as the PSU, an honest 550W would be fine with a 4690 and 390 (based on my own measurements and review data), so would 650W, or 750W, or 1250W, etc. The system will only draw what it needs (which will be around 70-100W at idle and around 200-400W at load (depending on load; modern GPUs (be it nVidia or AMD) are very good at dynamic power management)), and modern PSUs are efficient enough that "surplus capacity" doesn't mean significant surplus heat or waste power. If you're thinking you might go SLI or CrossFire in the future, I'd suggest a 750-1000W range PSU simply so you aren't replacing it when you add the second GPU, but if that's off the table, a quality 550W PSU should give you no problems. Personally I like the idea of "headroom" because it allows expansion with less fuss - say you want to add more hard-drives, or another GPU, or whatever; you've got surplus capacity on-tap. And since we're well into the era of 80-plus, that surplus capacity doesn't come at the cost of significant extra heat/waste/noise/etc.

 

If this mostly sounds like "it doesn't matter flip a coin" that's because it partially is - you're looking at generally excellent hardware on all fronts, and basically have to decide between different companies or brands based on non-performance items.

 

As far as the monitor - I'd take some time to browse WSGF's games database and look at games you like or play. Weird resolutions and ARs usually means more quirks, for example Mass Effect 1 never properly detected my 2048x1152 (thats 16:9, DC2K full-frame) monitor, so I could either "live with" 1920x1080 or use a resolution hack to enable the higher setting. I had similar experiences with a 2560x1600 monitor - its not that Windows ever has a problem (Windows generally doesn't care - whatever crazy display solution you can create, Windows can probably support), but games will either not natively support the resolution, or the UI won't scale right, or whatever. Getting into non-standard ARs produces significantly more problems (and I know Mass Effect will be one such problem, since the UI elements are fixed-aspect and won't scale properly), and going to "more wider" will be "more worse" with Vert- games (like Mass Effect), because you will get an even smaller viewport (ignoring that ME won't draw its UI correctly). Now, those ultra-wide monitors can do pillar-boxed 1080p but if that's what you're primarily going to have to live with, why not just get the 1080p monitor?

 

Here's the three games you specifically mentioned on WSGF - look at the example images, read what they have to say, and spend the time to search other games as well;

 

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/en (Skyrim, like Oblivion before it, *is* Hor+ and will work nicely with WS resolutions)

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/mass-effect (Vert-, meaning the wider your monitor gets, the smaller the viewport gets)

http://www.wsgf.org/dr/grand-theft-auto-v/en (Hor+ but has fixed 16:9 UI and cutscenes)

 

Having toyed around with a few ultra-wide displays in the past, they're certainly spiffy looking, and when content supports them nicely (e.g. running 2.35:1 video, or Hor+ games like Skyrim) they do very well and look very good, but the added compatibility quirks and issues with Vert- games is a big turn-off for me; I say let someone else be the early adopter. Performance wise I doubt 2560x1080 vs 1920x1080 is going to be anything worth writing home about, so if you're after the ultra-wide, that shouldn't be a problem (now, if you go after a 4K ultrawide that runs at 4096x2160 or thereabouts, that's another discussion entirely).

 

You're an absolute legend obobski,you've been so helpful! Sorry that you have to put up with my noobish self :blush: I had a nice chuckle when you said "30 GHz dodecacore CPU" :laugh:

 

I get what you're saying about the Vram usage,in the end I suppose I'm just somewhat paranoid. I may just go 390 for my peace of mind,can't hurt to have extra Vram anyway,can it? Plus,I've seen some nice 390 prices in comparison to 970 prices,so that's not really a loss there either. I asked about the psu because I heard the 390 is power hungry,but looking at what you said,I guess I'll go for something in the 600-700 range. I really appreciate the links,it appears that Skyrim and GTA V would do well,Mass Effect not so much. However,I may be willing to make the sacrifice on ME for the other two,so I'll think on it. I'll look for other solutions for ME too,just in case. Thank you again for all your help,you're a boss :)

[obobski]

The 290/390 are power hungry relative to the 900-series (IOW the 900-series is more power efficient), but they're not as ridiculous as high-end dual-GPU boards of recent memory (e.g. GTX 590, 690, Titan Z, 5970, 7990/8990, 295X2). Max board TDP is 300W (by spec), and real-world power consumption will be more in the 100-200W range unless you're putting the GPU to 100% usage. My 290X reports a measly 60W consumption (they have on-card power usage monitoring; the nVidia cards have this too) running Fallout 3 on Ultra with 4x SSAA at 1080p, for example, and running Skyrim the entire machine only consumes around 250W AC-side (knock ~18% off for the PSU and you have a DC-side estimate). With an honest 550W PSU it shouldn't be any trouble to run a single 200-300W PCIe card plus the 60-80W of the CPU, single hard-drive, etc but that 600-700 range will give you more room to grow if you want to add things down the line. If you're going after a 2/3-way multi-GPU configuration that's a much more significant discussion and I'd probably just skip the hassle and buy a 1kW PSU assuming your site wiring can handle it (it has to be able to supply ~10-12A continuously). The 900-series, by contrast have max TDPs more in the 150-220W range, so they do a little better in terms of max-out power draw, but have equally modern power management features to the AMD, so like the AMD will drop power consumption pretty significantly when not maxed-out (and Skyrim will likely not max either card out).

 

Give this a perusal wrt power draw:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page7.html

 

I didn't see (and they may not have specified) if this is AC-side or DC-side; let's assume worst case scenario and say this is DC-side and you're still fine on an honest 550W (you're a bit over 50% load).

 

They also have some GTA5 benchmarks in there, and the GTX 970 is present too:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page4.html (the first set of GTA5 numbers includes 4K; scroll for 1080p)

 

The extra VRAM is mostly superfluous - it won't hurt or help anything. My understanding is they're accomplishing it with higher density GDDR5 devices as well, so it shouldn't even have an impact on heat production (e.g. the 390X doesn't look like FireGL 8650 with the crazy double ranked memory), so if you have a better price on the 390/390X than the 290/290X, go with the 300-series (but really, they're the same thing, barring the name change and the 390s more frequently coming with 8GB (for extra fun: there are 8GB 290s too)).

 

On the games and WS and all that: there is no "hack" or "mod" to fix a Vert- game to not be Vert- (that said, there are some games that are only Vert- and/or only offer a certain number of resolutions because their configurators are awful; Morrowind is an example, and that *can* be addressed via the FPS Optimizer) and Mass Effect's UI problems are also just part of it. There is a third-party application that can dynamically switch ME's UI around to try and make it work "better" with multi-monitor or ultra-wide configurations, but its still a messy kludge (and still vert-). You'd be better off running it pillar-boxed on an ultra-wide monitor. Personally I'd probably just go with the 1080p monitor and be done with it, unless the majority of games you play heavily are Hor+ (e.g. if you play Mass Effect "once in a while" but play GTA5 and Skyrim "constantly" then the ultrawide might be fun if you can live with GTA5's UI quirks, but if you're playing them all equally or have a whole list of other Vert- games in your library that you frequently play, go with some other solution). Overall I'll just go back to WSGF as a resource - spend an hour or two perusing it and get a better idea of how ultrawide would mesh with what you're after, if it looks like it will be largely supported and you can live with pillar-box 1080p for a few games here and there then go for it, OTOH if it looks like you're frequently going to be relying on pillar-box or have a lot of older games that want to run at 800x600 or 1024x768 or similar, the ultrawide is probably not as good an idea. Having said all of that, I remember AOC making an ultrawide that can do dual input side-by-side as one of its modes, and that may be worth considering if you have a lot of games that aren't Hor+ with high resolution support, as you could run another machine or game consoles or whatever into the other input and use that extra screen space for more than drawing black bars. Just a random thought I had while writing this out. I also feel like it'd be worth at least mentioning Eyefinity/nVidia Surround and the old standby of triple 17" SVGA monitors - you'd get 3840x1024 (15:4) for games that support it (which is a lot of newer games), and a nice 5:4 center monitor for Vert- games (and that means you will have a bigger viewport than even 4:3 allows), as well as 17" SVGA monitors generally having very good mode support for 800x600 and 1024x768. If you have a big mix of newer and older games, and a lot of Vert- titles, that might be worth seriously considering as well. Price-wise all three of these solutions (a 1080p monitor, an ultrawide monitor, and the triple SVGA setup) will be very similar, and if you go with LED-backlit panels the power consumption and heat production will also be fairly similar across the board too, so it really comes down to your personal tastes, what your games/applications need, and how much physical space you have. Regardless of what you do, if you go for the ultrawide or 1080p monitor, I would suggest picking one that has good scaling options and functionality, in order to handle games and other stuff that can't be run at native resolution. From all of the ultrawide monitors I've looked at from AOC and LG they tend to have good scaling, and nicer 1080p monitors will have good scaling too, so it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish this.

[StormUndomiel]

The 290/390 are power hungry relative to the 900-series (IOW the 900-series is more power efficient), but they're not as ridiculous as high-end dual-GPU boards of recent memory (e.g. GTX 590, 690, Titan Z, 5970, 7990/8990, 295X2). Max board TDP is 300W (by spec), and real-world power consumption will be more in the 100-200W range unless you're putting the GPU to 100% usage. My 290X reports a measly 60W consumption (they have on-card power usage monitoring; the nVidia cards have this too) running Fallout 3 on Ultra with 4x SSAA at 1080p, for example, and running Skyrim the entire machine only consumes around 250W AC-side (knock ~18% off for the PSU and you have a DC-side estimate). With an honest 550W PSU it shouldn't be any trouble to run a single 200-300W PCIe card plus the 60-80W of the CPU, single hard-drive, etc but that 600-700 range will give you more room to grow if you want to add things down the line. If you're going after a 2/3-way multi-GPU configuration that's a much more significant discussion and I'd probably just skip the hassle and buy a 1kW PSU assuming your site wiring can handle it (it has to be able to supply ~10-12A continuously). The 900-series, by contrast have max TDPs more in the 150-220W range, so they do a little better in terms of max-out power draw, but have equally modern power management features to the AMD, so like the AMD will drop power consumption pretty significantly when not maxed-out (and Skyrim will likely not max either card out).

 

Give this a perusal wrt power draw:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page7.html

 

I didn't see (and they may not have specified) if this is AC-side or DC-side; let's assume worst case scenario and say this is DC-side and you're still fine on an honest 550W (you're a bit over 50% load).

 

They also have some GTA5 benchmarks in there, and the GTX 970 is present too:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1019-radeon-r9-390x-390-380/page4.html (the first set of GTA5 numbers includes 4K; scroll for 1080p)

 

The extra VRAM is mostly superfluous - it won't hurt or help anything. My understanding is they're accomplishing it with higher density GDDR5 devices as well, so it shouldn't even have an impact on heat production (e.g. the 390X doesn't look like FireGL 8650 with the crazy double ranked memory), so if you have a better price on the 390/390X than the 290/290X, go with the 300-series (but really, they're the same thing, barring the name change and the 390s more frequently coming with 8GB (for extra fun: there are 8GB 290s too)).

 

On the games and WS and all that: there is no "hack" or "mod" to fix a Vert- game to not be Vert- (that said, there are some games that are only Vert- and/or only offer a certain number of resolutions because their configurators are awful; Morrowind is an example, and that *can* be addressed via the FPS Optimizer) and Mass Effect's UI problems are also just part of it. There is a third-party application that can dynamically switch ME's UI around to try and make it work "better" with multi-monitor or ultra-wide configurations, but its still a messy kludge (and still vert-). You'd be better off running it pillar-boxed on an ultra-wide monitor. Personally I'd probably just go with the 1080p monitor and be done with it, unless the majority of games you play heavily are Hor+ (e.g. if you play Mass Effect "once in a while" but play GTA5 and Skyrim "constantly" then the ultrawide might be fun if you can live with GTA5's UI quirks, but if you're playing them all equally or have a whole list of other Vert- games in your library that you frequently play, go with some other solution). Overall I'll just go back to WSGF as a resource - spend an hour or two perusing it and get a better idea of how ultrawide would mesh with what you're after, if it looks like it will be largely supported and you can live with pillar-box 1080p for a few games here and there then go for it, OTOH if it looks like you're frequently going to be relying on pillar-box or have a lot of older games that want to run at 800x600 or 1024x768 or similar, the ultrawide is probably not as good an idea. Having said all of that, I remember AOC making an ultrawide that can do dual input side-by-side as one of its modes, and that may be worth considering if you have a lot of games that aren't Hor+ with high resolution support, as you could run another machine or game consoles or whatever into the other input and use that extra screen space for more than drawing black bars. Just a random thought I had while writing this out. I also feel like it'd be worth at least mentioning Eyefinity/nVidia Surround and the old standby of triple 17" SVGA monitors - you'd get 3840x1024 (15:4) for games that support it (which is a lot of newer games), and a nice 5:4 center monitor for Vert- games (and that means you will have a bigger viewport than even 4:3 allows), as well as 17" SVGA monitors generally having very good mode support for 800x600 and 1024x768. If you have a big mix of newer and older games, and a lot of Vert- titles, that might be worth seriously considering as well. Price-wise all three of these solutions (a 1080p monitor, an ultrawide monitor, and the triple SVGA setup) will be very similar, and if you go with LED-backlit panels the power consumption and heat production will also be fairly similar across the board too, so it really comes down to your personal tastes, what your games/applications need, and how much physical space you have. Regardless of what you do, if you go for the ultrawide or 1080p monitor, I would suggest picking one that has good scaling options and functionality, in order to handle games and other stuff that can't be run at native resolution. From all of the ultrawide monitors I've looked at from AOC and LG they tend to have good scaling, and nicer 1080p monitors will have good scaling too, so it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish this.

 

Wonderful :) The links were helpful,GTA V seems very playable with the 970 or 390,so thats great :) I'm estimating that I won't SLI/Crossfire for a while once the build is done,plus I have to stay in budget,so I guess I'll go 550-600 on the psu. With the WS,I'll camp out on the site for a while and check things out; it just so happens the my bro (who I mentioned in the first post) has come home for vacation,and he pretty much gets a say in whats going on with this build,so there'll be a lot of deliberation. I also had thought about Eyefinity/nVidia Surround, but hadn't known of that monitor specifically,I'm definitely looking it up. Thanks again :)