well, it really depends.
I never had any driver problems with my hd5870, so I probably will buy the HD7970, because I don’t need that ugly SSAO but the Compute power, which is certainly unreached by the GTX680.
(btw, SSAO is utter shit, I don’t get why most modern games have it, just looks like black mud)
SSAO is a matter of preference. I, myself, would rather be given the option to have it than not be offered it at all. The driver perks are the reason I prefer Nvidia to AMD/ATI.
Well, I don’t know why everybody’s so upset about AMD. I’ve got myself XFX Radeon HD6870 with dual heat pipe: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521
It works great - it’s quite silent and very efficient at games:
(SC2 all maxed out 1920x1080 - 90fps in 2v2 - never dropping below 60fps)
(Crysis 2 all maxed out, DX11 on, hd texture pack on - it’s smooth although sometimes dropping fps in most unexpected places - like empty room, while in great outdoor running smooth - therefore I blame it on crytek. 
)
Never had any driver problems, BSODs ets.
And all that just for 650pln which is about 203$. Tell me how much would be nVidia’s equivalent…? ;]
68xx series are really cheap, my 6850 was only 130$
Well, I’m loving this card so far. Haven’t touched the clocks and it already chews through BF3 no problem, and RAGE is smooth as butter. Beats the shit out of the 5770’s. Unfortunately, it only supports 2 displays. Not too sure what I’m going to do about that…
Get one good display and donate the other two?
Yeah I got to this thread too late, was going to warn you that single nVidia card + 3 monitors do not mix. Not sure what sort of “buggy AMD driver” experiences you’ve had, but I also generally don’t have a “fanboy” mentality - whatever gets good reviews and meets my criteria, I buy.
That said, I currently like AMD GPUs because they have great performance for low thermals and low power draw, and if I ever get 2 more monitors, 3 monitor Eyefinity.
As for nVidia manufacturers, I like EVGA (double lifetime warranty, even for overclocking) and Asus. In any event, $.02 
Yep, for multi-monitor compatibility the CCC is great, even with my 2 old style vga/dvi monitors+1 HDTV of a different resolution on HDMI it works perfectly and I get great framerates in Skyrim (~40fps outside, 60+ indoors) without even touching the clocks.
I must note that with eyefinity enabled I experience frame tearing with VSYNC on even when not running games. Monitor 1 gets perfect sync, while on the other 2 I have a sort of vsync tear line panning upwards over and over again.
for multimonitor (more than 2) all i say is VIRTU FTW (got it with my mobo) i7 2600k and MSI GTX 580 Frozr III Power edition
It’s funny, because I’ve been out of the video card market so long, I had forgot what was generally decent video card pricing. When I saw the 680 for $500, I gobbled that beastie up like it was a boxing day sale. 
Oh well. Good to be in the 600 series, it’ll be nice having the best for a change.
If the 680 had come out sooner, I’d have gotten one too. I had loads of money when I upgraded my computer, much of it spent on stupid shit that I don’t need. As it stands now, I may get a 600 series in about a year when I get my next tax return
So basically right before the 700/800 series comes out, then you’ll be like “If only I’d waited” etc
I have a 400 series and didn’t feel the need to get a new card, but I didn’t know the 600 series was right around the corner. I wouldn’t mind upgrading to one behind the current series whenever I get an upgrade, assuming the next series didn’t start getting released right after.