Why would you turn HT off? There is no reason that your i7 should be heavily bottlenecking anything. First off 3 cards doesn't scale very well but the blue screen has to be something else...
3 cards scale fine, I think? PCIe bandwidth is why the upgrade imho, for three cards(x16/x16/x8 on X79 vs x8/
x4/x4 on Z77), and it's a worthy one, to me.
So? 3d scores(seen at the links) are exactly the same no matter what silly current CPU you use, FX-8150, FX-8350, Intel 3770k, 3570k, 2600k...3960X, 3820...I have benchmarks for each and every one, stock, overclocked, mid-clocked, low-clocked, mem at stock, mem OC'ed different boardfs with every CPU, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...
All I do is run benchmarks and play BF3 with TPU members. I don't have a job other than TPU, but really, it's a hobby I have a tonne of time for, and not a job. I love benchmarking, OC'ing; doing reviews is just the icing on the cake that lets me play with more parts. NO job can be this fun
[
I thought you did reviews? What site do you work for? Why are you even asking such a question?