Actually, you'd be buying it as a cheap compute card. The Titan doesn't have butchered double precision performance like 780 Ti. Also, I think more of the other compute extensions are enabled. Not as many as Tesla, but a good compromise.

There are a few scenarios where two cards are appropriate. One is extreme gaming, you want more performance than the fastest single card can provide. Second is you already have one card, some extra money comes your way or you find a really good deal on a second so you go for a second card. Sometimes it's cheaper to go Crossfire/SLI with lower end cards that have better performance/dollar and it'll out perform higher end single GPUs. However you make the tradeoff of compatibility and reliance on drivers to get the most out of the setup.

In general, always try to obtain the performance level you want with a single GPU. But weigh the options in every situation, sometimes Crossfire/SLI can be a fantastic setup if the right deals come around.

@PredatorRules: No worries, so many GPUs come out it's hard to keep track!

@04dcarraher: In theory it could work with any GPU. Mantle is a streamlined, multi-core optimized rendering pipeline that replaces DirectX or OpenGL. It allows the developer to send more data to the GPUs for rendering by eliminating overhead and taking advantage of parallelism. However, it's also a low level API, which means all rendering specific commands are specific to an architecture, they would have to rewrite that portion of the code for every architecture out there, so in this case, they're only supporting GCN, their latest.

It could work with VLIW4, VLIW5 and even Nvidia's architecture, but rendering would have to be written for each architecture individually.

Perhaps Microsoft will catch on and update DirectX to be more like Mantle in future revisions such that it's more efficient with multiple cores and reduce overhead but still keep the high level functionality that allows rendering instructions to be universal. You'll always get more out of your GPU using low-level APIs, but it means you have to write your engine for every architecture.

@PredatorRules: I don't recall there being a Pitcairn silicon with 20 CUs (7870) being clocked lower than 1000MHz ever (unless they have some weird third-party passive models or something). As far as I know the 7970 was the only card that had a non GHz variant.

There are plenty of cards faster than the 7870, but the truth of the matter is, it (and comparable Nvidia cards) can still handle any game out there no problems at 1080p, maxed out or damn close. At ~$200 for it or its 270X equivalent it's a very good value. I have two in Crossfire and my system handles everything like a champ.

My friend just bought a GTX 770. He paired it with his i5 2500k, he runs AC Black Flag just fine all settings turned up, smooth as butter. Something is up with your system.

I'm skeptical about Mantle not requiring GCN to run. The benefits from going to a low-level API stem from the fact that commands and functions are hardware-specific and optimized.

Although, the part where it acts as the layer between driver and card might work with Nvidia cards as well. If I understood the presentation correctly, Direct3D does a lot of redundant checks and handles threading poorly whereas Mantle removes those checks and does thread assignment much more intelligently reducing the amount of time it takes to actually get data to the GPU to draw a frame.

It's an interesting new tool and if it takes off I can see Direct3D and OpenGL trying to follow and make similar optimizations available. Either way, it's good for the industry.

Yeah, I dropped $110 on this game. I really don't like EA, they're a pretty terrible company and honestly I do think that's way overpriced for a game. But for me, the value comes from playing with friends. My friends and I always play these games to death, so I get hundreds of hours out of them. $110 to spend some quality multiplayer time with my buddies is worth it to me.

I don't mind the map design. I like the dynamic weather and levolution stuff. Also, I think the new China Rising maps are absolutely gorgeous and so far and tactically they are really fun to play. I just have to wait for the next patch. The latest patch changed the previous scene rendering order for some reason and now alternate frame rendering is broken (Crossfire and SLI suffer massive flickering on terrain).