The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

damn sam, didn't know you upgraded! (you normally run this by me, not just HD porn sites )

congrats! Btw how has performance increaced in games vs the x2s? Especially the heavy tesselation titles?

you sold the x2s yet?

bet you haven't tidied the case though?

i made an upgrade. Added 2GB of ram, from my brothers defunct PC. 2x1GB of corsair xms2 pc6400 ram. In tandem with my geils. Still have my 3.4GHz OC.

Looks like this is one asus board that just keeps going . Just under 3 years now.

PS rich. Due to your post i went back after months of not playing cod4. Played a couple rounds, more screen shots up. Forgot how good this game is. Topped my first round back in. Also i use the RPG alot, yes, but as a side to my W1200 shotty. Its either that or depending on the map, i will use an mp5/ ak74u (neither have an RPG). Got a new mousemat that's 450mm x 900mm. Very nice, covers a good portion of my desk. And have jumped from my habu to using my brothers roccat kone. Again very nice upgrade. Now if just to sell my P45 dfi, e2140 and e5200, silverstone cases and a 9800GT. Should get enough for a decent upgrade, but what? GPU or SSD?

 

Rich: Drivers were pretty tiresome to begin with, but not the biggest problem. The main issue I had was having a board with a dodgy PCI express controller (the X38-DS4) and not realising it. It's worth pointing out though, had I not had that issue, my HD3870 Crossfire system would have worked fine, I wouldn't have destroyed one of them trying to fit a cooler to fix the crashes, and I wouldn't have needed the 4870/4870X2 when those cheap deals happened, and may never have got the 4870X2 quadCF system in the first place. I don't like using 'what if?'s generally as they can be applied to absolutely anything, but this one was a real thinker.
The first PSU I tried, the 850W BeQuiet [on the recommendation of shaff I hasten to add ] was absolute garbage as well, which didn't help matters much. The Zalman it was replaced with is an incredible unit though, so perhaps that was also for the best. Because of all the stability issues, AMD insisted I have a 1KW PSU to test with, so I did try a Corsair HX 1000W, which also worked, but was absurdly loud, so off to ebay it went. Lost a bit of money on it, but nothing serious.
The short-term fix for the motherboard issue, since the new X48-DS5 I bought had the exact same fault, was buying Shaff's P45 Maximus II, which was the first working board for the system, as I was beginning to believe that Gigabyte boards simply didn't have what it took for crossfire. However, a few months later when the Maximus went the way of all things Asus, I happened across a massively discounted X48-DS4, so I decided to give Gigabyte one last chance. They have yet to let me down since. The X48-DS4 performed perfectly from start to finish. It was no great overclocker, and I ended up sticking with 3.65Ghz on my Q9550, but I owe this more to the antiquated X48 chipset (P45 is newer as it happens, X48 is simply a modified X38) than the board itself. Latterly I cut the CPU further to 3.4Ghz and ramped down the VCore for less heat.
Drivers slowly improved through the months. Mirrors Edge was unplayable for so many months I gave up on it, there were a few other instances of this. I played FEAR 2 with only 1 of the 4 GPUs, as there was no profile for it when it came out, and I was itching to play it. As it happens, the game is so easy going, I managed to play it maxed out at 2560 even with only one of the 4 4870s. For a 2009 game, and a good looking one at that, that was a huge surprise.
After that, I don't really remember many other issues, betas without profiles that didn't run well on a few occasions, but that's about it.
Quad crossfire scaling was difficult to assess as individually benchmarking each game you play is just too tedious. Suffice to say though, that in terms of real-world graphics power, an HD6970 is only about 6% more powerful than an HD4870X2, yet the performance increases I'm getting are a fair bit higher than that.
It's generally accepted that latter quadCF scaling for 4870X2s was about 200%, so 3.0x, though it varied considerably either side of this. It's also generally accepted that dual GPU scaling of the HD6 series is 95%, and in a fair few games it's 100-105%.

As far as dual cards and quadCF in the future go, my attitude is basically this:
Dual-GPU cards shouldn't exist, simple as that. The only reason to have two GPUs on one card is because the biggest GPU you can make is only about 150W big (The official limit of PCIe is 300W. Non-standard cards like the 4GB HD5970 and MARS295 can exceed this, as special products)
That was the case with the 4870, AMD's best GPU was 150W or so in power. With the HD5 series, they got a bit bigger, so the HD5970 wasn't two of the best, it was two of the second-best. Fine, as it was still well beyond the best single card, but you got more out of two normal 5870s than one 5970.
Now that GPU size is increasing towards the ideal maximum, with the HD6970 at 210-220W, what use are dual cards? They're massively scaled down cards to the extent you don't gain much.
It's important to remember that the more cards you use, the fewer games that support them, and the worse the scaling is. The HD6 series has not changed this.
I will only find myself going quad crossfire if it's affordable, uses two cards [more than 2 cards isn't practical for spacing and cooling/noise reasons] and is well beyond what two single GPUs can do.
Frankly I don't see this happening again. We'd need to see a reversion to the 150W top-end GPUs of yesteryear, and this is a backward step there's no sign of.

As for Warhead, I literally opened it up for a couple of minutes to test for a laugh, was sufficiently shocked as to post the results here, then went into doing other stuff [3dmark11 in particular]. I'll have a play with frame rates later. While 30-45fps isn't my comfort zone, remember this is Crysis, so acceptable frame rates are far lower than they'd normally be. I have to say, when it was 40fps, the game felt pretty silky smooth to me. It's the 18-20fps dips for extreme stuff I'd want to eradicate. They're livable, but I really don't need 8xAA. I'd like to see how 4x fares.
I could well end up playing far more of it, since it runs that well. The question is if the game bogs down later on like the original Crysis did. From what I'm reading it does a bit, but not as much as the original. We shall see. If it means AA off but everything else max I might plod on through.

I've got 2x4GB Corsair XMS3 at 1600mhz CAS9 running alongside the 2x2GB I had before, in a 2-4-2-4 config. That stuff's ludicrously cheap right now, I paid £89 for the 8GB this week, which is less than the £100 I paid for the 4GB in February 2010!

Interestingly, this is the first upgrade I can say I've done where it actually feels like a whole new system, for several years. A performance, silence and storage update all in one must be the reason for it.

Shaff: I would have, but not seen you online much. That and I had some issues with Pidgin. Besides, all the spare time's been spent playing with the system, and with the other half of christmas, the PS3 (or more specifically Gran Turismo 5).
Case tidied? Not really. The wires aren't as much of a mess as before as they're all bunched in a column on the right hand side, but cable-tidied it is not. Promised myself I'd do it this term though, I may do it when I re-TIM my CPU.
I'm not selling the first 4870X2, as an engi-sample I want to keep it, plus for sentimental reasons. As for the second card, if I would get a reasonable sum for it I would look into selling it. For now I'm keeping them as backups in case something happens with the 6970 setup, but so far so good.
I don't really play anything with heavy tesselation, all the new game installs will be happening once I've cleared out my 7200rpm drives. Got a ninth WD20EARS, this time to go into my gaming PC as a quiet drive to keep all the non-game stuff stored on, which is ousting the 750GB F1, sitting alongside the Caviar Black which will now become what it was meant to be in the first place, exclusively a games drive (didn't end up that way due to lack of space. 2TB should cure that!)

As for your upgrade, it was only cheap, but the 40GB X25-V rocked my world. Apart from meaning without the data from the other drives being used the PC is near-silent, the performance of it is well beyond that of the caviar black or the raptor. You don't need a big one, but SSDs are a marked improvement in windows performance, trust me.
Entirely up to you for graphics, if you're feeling short on power, how much so? Closest upgrade for you right now would be an HD6850 for £135. Beyond that it's diminishing returns for cost. Two HD6850s are great that resolution, savagely powerful on a reasonable power level (250W, 6+6 pin) and they can be quiet if you buy the slightly more expensive XFX versions (£290 for a pair).

On another note, a friend at fragsoc's got his new Sandy Bridge to 5.2Ghz, straight off. He's using watercooling, but at 1.35V I think you'd get away with air for that speed if you had a good heatsink. Absolutely insane stuff. Remember that's going to perform like a 5.8Ghz i5, 7.0Ghz Core 2(45nm), 8.0Ghz Core 2(65nm) or Phenom II. Bulldozer's got a lot of work to do if it's going to take on things like this. They're not even expensive chips.


Holy crap this is a lot of words. Guess there's lots to talk about!

 

Eugh. Do bear in mind that none of this is visible from the outside though. You may also notice it's nearly all fan cables, as that was the most recent thing to change, the fan controllers. Going to add a couple of the thermoprobes in too soon, that will be interesting to try and tidy.

 

Oh My God! So when you aren't ripping us all up with the RPG - you're blasting us with the shottie! I was in a couple rounds where a shottie guy was just rockin the house! Blam Blam Blam. I watched the Death Cam, with 1. first me and 2. then the guy next to me, and 3. then the guy next to him, being killed all in the brief video.

It was like: "Would somebody puhleeez kill that shottie before there are no more players on our team?" Hahaha. (I have to admit, however, as much as I told myself - "shottie - NO" - that with the G3 one shot kill - what's the difference? One difference is the G3 is also a long-range kill, but close in you might as well have a shottie. Now that's a good point - if you're gonna carry a shottie - why don't you just carry a G3 as your second weapon, and have the long range aspect of it too?)

Oh, I just answered my own question. One difference probably is that the G3 would not be a one-shot kill if I didn't have magnum rounds - ie, Perk 2 stopping power. But a shottie is always a one-shot kill if you're close in - so you can use Perk 2 for carrying two main weapons.

I see guys using the magnum pistol to great effect - I guess that would be like carrying a shottie. It seems to have good range also.

I tried the AK74u a bit - it's nice. You say on some maps you like that or the Mp5 - do they fire faster than a regular AK? Probably, right? I tried the mini uzi a bit - really fast fire rate. But I'll be more comfortable when I finally get my P90 back - with stopping power.

I think I should break down finally and get a decent mouse mat, and decent mouse.



You've already upgraded from your habu to the roccat kone above (6000 dpi are you f**king kidding??? - what is your brother doing with a mouse like that!!!) and I'm still using my laptop 1000 dpi logitec v220. LOL

Maybe one day I'll become a serious gamer and invest in the basics - high quality mousepad and high quality mouse.

Rich

 

A good mouse makes a tremendous difference to your gameplay ability, you'd be surprised. 1000dpi is high for a laptop mouse though, usually they're 400 tops. Even the Razer I use is only 1600, and that's ample.

I swerved people from the Roccat Kone as it had some serious quality control issues when it first came out. No idea if it's still like that or not, but I remain a Razer fan. Top quality hardware, often at very reasonable prices (Roccats are very expensive).

 

Yeah, it seems like it tracks pretty well with the 1000 dpi - but still - I'll have to give a really good mouse a try one day - maybe more in the affordable range of a razer or habu.

I'm still catching up on your big post prior to that one:

That is utterly amazing how inexpensive memory is. Also I didn't know you could run mis-matched sizes like that! Interesting.

Wow - that's a surprise. I know how you despise the jaggies. But didn't you once say that crysis, and maybe also warhead, didn't really seem to benefit that much from AA? Does that mean that you really don't see jaggies that much in the game?

 

You can, but it's not recommended. Fortunately I seem to have gotten away with it. I'll warn you though, it's very important to get brand and speed correct. This is if anything, more of an issue than capacity.

It's Crysis I was referring to with minimal impact of AA. It doesn't anti-alias very much of the game, yet still eats performance. However, I think Jeff's modified script improves things a little bit.
The AA in Warhead is much better, it really does look the part. Also, a guy on HardForum is benchmarking the entire game [as in, all the way through it] in Fraps, section by section, posting graphs. Interesting to see how all the different chapters compare. So far 'Frost', an ice level, is looking like the worst part. Not quite as much of a tank as the original Crysis, but then Warhead starts out more demanding than the original. I hear people say it ends up less demanding due to the ridiculous end of Crysis, we shall see.

 

Ok, I guess you're going to plod through it - but I bet from what you just said, that you won't turn AA off. I know how you hate those jaggies - you'll turn some other setting down a bit is my guess. LOL

Shaff - are you enjoying BC2 as much as Jeff is?

I just bought it - I plan to continue to rank up in COD4, but I didn't want to be the last guy playing BC2 and have to catch up to all of you guys.

I don't know how well I'll be playing - the game is giving me 2560x1600 with Advanced settings, whatever that means - I think it means jaggies and limited field of vision. That's all right as long as it shows me the long-range targets trying to shoot me - I don't have to see all the long-range trees in the way, lol.

(Hopefully this one house I have been working on will finally sell and I can slip an HD6970 into my case in couple months.)

Sam, I see your comments about Sandy Bridge - a new set of motherboards are on their way - amazing overclocking potential! Wow!

And, are you saying that you have a 40 gig SSD somewhere in your case. Did you put windows 7 on it? What are you using it for? Will Warhead be installed on it?

Rich

 

Right now I'm seeing a 50/50 split between good and "bad" OCing 2600Ks. Some are hitting 5ghz with a ~1.36v vcore, like your friend, while others have >1.5v vcore to get into the 5's. Even the lower OC are well into the 4Ghz range though.

 

Hey,

My friend suggested that you guys know what you're talking about. I do not. I'm trying to build a computer and I have limited experience doing this... and since I'm spending so much I figured I'd run it past some forums.

http://glenbradford.com/files/Storage/3dComputer.xls

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=190316&st=0&gopid=1176219&#entry1176219

I'm trying to set up 5 monitor computing, complete with 3D vision surround and I don't really intend to overclock or any of that fancy stuff. I think my memory is probably too high end.. and i may want to slip in another video card to go for more monitors.

2-way sli + 1-2 auxiliary video cards is what i'm shooting for.

2-way sli - 3 monitor output

auxiliary monitor - 2 monitor output per piece.

 

Rich: Well, not necessarily. I've played 20-30 hours of Bad Company 2, and I've never had AA enabled for that.
Rich - Advanced settings merely means 'custom', i.e. not one of the preset 'low, medium, high'. Advanced can mean higher than high, it can mean lower than low.
I bought the SSD about 4 months ago, and it has Windows 7, basic programs like office and web browsers, and Heroes of newerth (small game I play often) on it. There isn't really enough space to put anything else on it. I could potentially try warhead if I encounter issues with loading lag.


bradford86: CPU: 4/10 - the 870 was unnecessary in its day, as it's not much faster than the far cheaper 860. It's now been replaced with the i7 2600K on LGA1155 however, so it's now completely pointless.
M/B: 0/10 - Firstly, that's an LGA1366 board for an LGA1156 processor, it would never have been compatible anyway. Secondly, it's totally over the top, you only need that board if you're using three or four graphics cards. Two, and it's not necessary in the slightest.
Case: 8/10 - Personally I think the original HAF932 is a better design, but the HAF X is still a decent case.
HDD: 5/10 - You don't need a raid edition drive, you aren't running a server. Also, why so small? Go with a WD10EALS at least. Twice the space, and no more expense.
SSD: 9/10 - Dated, but still an excellent drive.
Monitors: 6/10 - Acer stuff is of mediocre build quality, it's cheap, but with good reason. Switch these for Samsung/LG equivalents
Power supply: 1/10 - Firstly, Ultra stuff is terribad. Secondly, 1050W is ridiculous overkill even for the specification you've used (which is also inefficient).
GPUs: 2/10 - The GTX470 has been replaced by more efficient cards that aren't quite so power-hungry. You'll want to change those to GTX570s
RAM: 6/10 - A reasonable choice, if you'd bought an LGA1366 CPU. For the CPU you chose, or the CPU you should be choosing, you need dual channel memory, not triple. Also, 2GB sticks are long in the tooth now, 4GB sticks are a better buy.


I'd recommend sticking with newegg for everything. They're not always cheaper than tigerdirect, but they are for a lot of things, and I've heard far more issues with customerservice at tigerdirect than I have with newegg.
I don't use 3D, so I don't know if you're able to use the centre 3 monitors for a game and have the outer 2 still at the desktop. You'll have to research that. [Personally I think 3D is a needless expensive gimmick, it doesn't work with a huge number of games, and it's often a bit of a waste]
It's called a heatsink. If you wish to overclock, yes you should buy a bigger heatsink. Otherwise, the one that comes with the CPU I'm recommending you will do fine.
I have no idea what you think an auxiliary graphics card is, have never heard of the term.


Corrected CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072
Corrected M/B: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128463
Corrected RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145324
Corrected HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136534
Recommended monitors: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824005181 (x5)
Corrected PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139015
Corrected GPUs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162070 (x2)
OR, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162068 (x2)

I give the option of GTX570s or GTX580s because at 5760x1080 [3 monitors], let alone 5, the 1.25GB of memory on the GTX570s isn't always enough. As it turns out, it sometimes isn't enough on the GTX580s either. Ideally for a multi-monitor setup you want the 2GB Radeon HD6900 series, but they are much weaker for 3D, so in this case it's a toss up between being able to max games out with full details and AA, or being able to run 3D well. On the basis of this build, I've designed it for the latter.

 

In other news, my reign at the top of the 3dmark06 leaderboard among friends is at an end. Due to ridiculous amounts of CPU limitation, the 6970s are basically idle in 06 on the i5 at 4.1Ghz, thus new Sandy Bridge owners have raised the bar to 34,000, even with just one 6970.

 

sammorris:

Wow, this is fantastic. How do I run 5 monitors with only 2 graphics cards and 2 PCIe slots?

The intent here is to have 2-way SLI running 3D so I can video games... and then I was hoping for an auxiliary PCIe slot so that I can hook up 2 more monitors in portrait mode for financial applications.

I was advised to dual boot this way, one boot for gaming and one boot for finance stuff.

 

You should be able to hook up the main 3 monitors using the DVI connectors on each card, and then use the HDMI connector and the remaining DVI port for the auxiliaries. Don't count me on this though as it isn't possible with radeons (however, it is possible to run 5 monitors at once in game with AMD, not so with nvidia).
Realistically, I find it's easier to run a graphics setup to the main monitor(s) and then get a cheap second PC to run the auxiliary monitor(s). Much easier this way.

 

Ok, so spending a bit more time with Catalyst 10.12a, had the following issues to report:


-> Negligible scaling in Left 4 Dead 2 - Resolved by: Disabling ULPS in the registry
-> Fan speed/Temps not monitorable on second card - Resolved by: Disabling ULPS in the registry
-> Catalyst AI can no longer be disabled - Unresolved. I hope they add this back in before the HD6990 is out, else all hell will break loose

Disabling ULPS does unfortunately have the downside of increasing idle consumption a fair bit, up from 165W to 220W.

 

sammorris:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6942947&CatId=3669&beta=Y
Multiple Monitors Support: Yes
Max. Monitors Supported: 2

a constraint that you are missing:
these cards have multiple outputs, but you can't use all of the outputs for monitors. each card only supports up to 2 monitors.

that said, your helpfulness is unparalleled and it's obvious to me that you still know more about picking out value-components than i do.

Can you pick me out a motherboard with 3 PCIe slots, a case that will hold it, and then i think that's all i need, i should be able to buy then. (assuming that all of these components fit together an turn on )

do you have an opinion on the side monitors?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009249

they will be in portrait mode, so they need "pivot" option.

also, do you have an opinion on which SSD i should get? I want one of those too if possible, but this 1TB HD looks awesome!

 

please tellme that how to can get full graphical PC.
PC play all software & games & movies.
but i work any software no held.

 

bradford86:The reason it states maximum of 2 monitors is because you cannot run the vision surround technology without using SLI, you need a second card to activate the third screen so it can be used in game. Once you are, I'm afraid I'm unsure whether you can also use two peripheral monitors. If you can't, you may well be able to use a cheap lightweight card to run the other monitors, like an 8400GS, but you will need a third PCIe slot for this unless you buy one that fits in a 1x slot, like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500164

The more reading I do the more I become convinced you can't run 5 monitors off a single set of cards with 3D enabled. Running more than 4 displays [possibly 3 with nvidia] has a limit on using dualhead adapters which split DVI or Displayport connections into double. These devices only support 60Hz, not the 120Hz required for 3D.
On that basis I'm pretty sure an extra card will be required, which is potentially a driver headache. It certainly isn't completely straightforward.
Do you already have a basic specification desktop PC? It would be much easier simply to get the 5 screens, hook the SLI surround PC up to the centre three, and use your old PC on the outer displays.

Board with three PCIe 16x slots: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128464
Apart from being fairly pricey I'll point out that the use of three PCIe 16x slots cuts your performance down a bit on the GPUs, as at least one of them will be running at 4x bus speed, which typically has about a 5-10% impact on performance. In some rare cases it'll be more though (usually 20-30% max). This is unavoidable with any LGA1155 or LGA1156 system as the CPU provides the PCI express bandwidth, so you'll always only have 16x to spread around, if you have three cards on the bus you won't be able to run the two mains at 8x, you're limited to 8+4+4.
Sandy-Bridge-EX is due towards the end of the year on LGA2011, but right now, the current solution is to switch to a first-gen LGA1366 system, to get the extra PCIe bandwidth.
Personally, this isn't a tradeoff I would make, as for the extra few percent you gain in PCIe bandwidth, the CPU you're getting is much slower, and pumps out quite a lot more heat.
These aren't 3D monitors (they don't have to be for the outer displays), but I'm a big fan of Dell monitors, and these do swivel, as well as being high-spec and LED backlit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824260027

The 1TB HDD I've included is merely an indication that you don't need to buy enterprise-grade drives for a home user desktop. It isn't the fastest, nor the biggest drive you can buy, however.
This is the performance-oriented 1TB drive, which will be noticeably faster than the WD10EALS for loading a few things:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533
It has a 2TB version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136456
Or, if you need more space, but not the performance, this is a well-priced 2TB drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514
For the most storage in a single drive, this is the current buy, however, in most systems it requires the use of a separate 1x PCIe card [you also need a 64-bit OS, which I would recommend anyway for a high-end gaming system like this]
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136764


For the SSD, you have a few options. The bare necessities for installing windows, office and nothing else? Enough space to add a few games in? A lot of games?
This is my SSD, despite being base spec, it's transformed my PC's performance from an otherwise fast drive, the WD1001FALS previously mentioned.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167030
Windows, a few programs and a small game have left me with about 5GB left on it.
If you want a bit more space, I'd say use either:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550
or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167031
They aren't the absolute fastest but I'm most partial to Intel SSDs, as they're much more reliable than other brands.

optiplex1: Er, what? I assume you meant this:
"Please tell me what to buy to have a gaming PC that can run all games maxed out"
You need to tell us
-> What size monitor you have, or would like if you need to buy new one(s)
-> How much you're willing to spend
-> Any components you already have and want to use
-> Any specific games you're looking to play.

 

yeah, i agree with you take on the monitors

i only intend to be doing 3D gaming on 3 screens..

and then with a reboot the idea is to do 2D financial applications across 5 screens.

this board shouldnt work because there isn't any spacing between the pcie x16 slots

the board would basically need to be 3-way SLI compatible and then i'll only be using 2-way sli

i need something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131358R

but i can't find the p67 chipset. that's x58, and i think that p67 is what you need for the new processor?

here's one that would work in terms of PCIe slot spacing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188057

but again, dont know if the processor fits.

 

You only need one space between the slots to run SLI. The cards will be next to each other, so they'll run hotter and noisier, but they'll still be within spec, and will still work fine.
This is the problem with 3-slot boards which is why I've never advocated the use of one. It's a lot easier to just use two slots, as far as cooling and noise goes.

X58 is the chipset I was referring to earlier, with the first generation i7s. It is for socket LGA1366 and will not fit the new LGA1155 processors.

If you need all 5 monitors as a single display space for something, you're better off with AMD's eyefinity, as it works with 5 displays as long as you have the outputs. There are 5 outputs on a Radeon HD6950 or HD6970, which can be used to run 5 displays at once [only up to 1920x1200 resolution max, but that's not an issue here]. You will need some active displayport to DVI dongles unless you buy two displayport monitors though.
Cheapest 1080p displayport monitor I can find is this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824260019
which does still have the portrait-tilt.

However, if you run some monitors portrait and others landscape, you aren't going to be able to run a single displayspace, as you won't have a rectangle shape display area, it'll be taller on the outsides, so H-shaped. If this is how you want the monitors setup you will have to abandon the idea of a 5-monitor resolution, and simply manually stretch the program across all the monitors, wasting the extra space above and below on the outside monitors. Does that make sense?