Upgrades & Worrying Problems - HELP!

[SimpleLeonard]

I have a few upgrades in mind for my gaming/editing PC, however I can only afford to purchase one of them. I'm also experiencing a few problems as described below.

My current system specifications are:

CPU

i7 3770k

Motherboard

ASUS Maximus IV Extreme

RAM

4x 4GB Kingston HyperX 1600mHz

GPU

msi r7970

Case

Cooler Master HAF-X

Storage

Samsung 840 series 120gb SSD, Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD, unknown 1tb HDD

PSU

OCZ Fatal1ty Champ1on Series 1000Watt

Display

LG Flatron E2340 24inch

Cooling

Stock Heatsink

Keyboard

HP 10$ keyboard

Mouse

Steelseries Kana V2

I'm currently debating whether to buy the Asus PG278Q 2160x1440p, 144Hz monitor to use two monitors, a second msi r7970 to run in crossfireX with my current 2 year old card, a completely fresh card (I'm thinking a Nvidia 780 to eventually run with the Asus monitor), or a H100 or a recommendable equivalent so that I can finally overclock my 3770k, in which case I would also purchase a mechanical gaming keyboard.

Some extra info:

This is my first custom built rig. For a long time when I first built it I would receive a motherboard error 55 and it wouldn't post. My PC would not give me a picture, but all lights were on and all fans including the graphics card coolers were spinning. After rapidly resetting my PC it would eventually give me a picture and a post beep and power on normally. Some time later I upgraded to windows 8 and the issue resolved itself. To this day I don't know what caused the problem or whether it might return.

Another problem that I've been experiencing lately are unexpected graphics driver crashes, sometimes restoring and other times crashing my system completely either rebooting by itself or forcing me to manually reset the system. These crashes sometimes happen as frequently as every few minutes but can disappear for hours on end. Sometimes I would watch a video and the picture and sound would freeze forcing me to once more having to reboot my PC. These incident have never caused a blue-screen. I have updated my graphics drivers but I am still getting these crashes. Is this a sign that my card is dieing?

I hope someone can help me make a wise decision on what to go for next or in what order to upgrade my rig and I also hope that someone can shed some light on my issues described above.

I'm thankful for any help I can get.

-Leonard

[Vacsol]

a 7970 isn't going to take full advantage of the 1440p 144hz capabilities or the G-sync feature

 

I'd wait a couple days to see if Nvidia shows off their new cards at gamescom before making any decisions.