Hi everyone,

I'm building a new PC at the moment - the last thing that's going into the PC case is a GPU which I haven't decided on.

I have a mini-ITX build, so no crossfire or SLI for me. The case is a Corsair 250D so size of the GPU isn't too much of a factor. The processor is the i7 4790K.

RAM is maxed out at 16GB, would prefer more but alas, no 16GB modules...yet!

I use virtual machines a lot hence the RAM and CPU as I find it useful for pentesting.

However I also like to game. Currently I have a HD 24" monitor although would go up to a 1440 27" monitor and thus I'm looking at the following:

GTX780 with 6GB (Watchdog et al like lots of VRAM and I suspect future games will gobble up bigger VRAM's)

OR do you consider this not so worthwhile and it's better to go with a 780Ti instead which comes with 3GB?

Alternatively - as they are slightly cheaper (and for hash cracking - ie john the ripper/oclhashcat) - Radeon is better for this and I can use it for password cracking etc.

However I can use a Nvidia for that too even if it's a bit slower at it. Time is money though so I wondered how's the performance of the 290X on Linux - ie SteamOS and/or Ubuntu if anyone have used them (specifically for gaming as well as stability)

I'm aware that the Radeon have had terrible driver support on Linux but with SteamOS being in the news lately I've heard things have improved. I've tried looking on OpenBenchmarking.org but the search function is disabled.

Any Linux users able to give advice please?

Thanks!