advice/ suggestions please

[Starrskream]

MY current setup
Asus Prime z590 - A lga 1200
I9 10900k water cooled (cooler master ml240l closed AIO)
Samsung evo 970 plus / evo 870/ and two platter drives for backup storage
g skill trident z 32gb ddr4 4000 (pc3200_ cas latency 19)
corsair HX series HX850 gold certified modular PSU
CM Storm series trooper case, all the fans are maglev fans and every fan slot in the tower is used. it keeps anything i put in it nice and cool.

evga gtx 1070 6gb ( i am tempted to use this card to power my three other monitors( 4 total)
- can i run two different cards easily and achieve this?

so here i am looking to upgrade the video card.
ive been over the benchmark list and narrowed it down. video cards are something i use long term. I Plan to try and get 4-6 years out of them before i upgrade.
mostly gaming, very little editing, if ever anymore.

The cards im looking at:
EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 12GB XC Black Gaming, 12G-P4-2261-KR, 12GB GDDR6, Dual Fans, Metal Backplate
EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Gaming, 12G-P5-3657-KR, 12GB GDDR6, Dual-Fan, Metal Backplate

questions/ thoughts:
what is the XC all about?
what in reality is the best bang for the buck between 300-400$ ?
what card that meets the above can handle very mild overclocking? (just memory and gpu clocks, no voltage boosting really)
can i keep using my current psu? (

I am a big fan of EVGA, ive used their cards for years and always have great luck so im leery of brands i know little about. I am open to suggestions though.
I am not concerned with playing on max settings in 4k, i use 24" 1080 monitors and wont be upgrading anytime soon. but maxing out 1080 makes me very happy.
i play battlefield 2042, diablo, warframe, overwatch. nothing super heavy.

thanks for your help and guidance!

[David (PassMark)]

I think XC might be "extra compact". But this is just a guess.

I wouldn't use two different video cards in the same system for gaming. I think many games will get confused and run on the wrong card / monitor. We see this a lot with laptops as well, where the game has to pick between the integrated video card card vs the discrete video card.

You might want to wait until the nVidia 4000 series is released in a few months. It should push down the prices of the 2000 and 3000 series.

I can't comment on how far you can overclocking individual video cards. I don't do it as computers are already unstable enough at the best of times. Stability is way more important than getting the last 5% of performance (for me).

[Starrskream]

So after about 2 hours of videos, research etc. I decided on a rtx 3070 xc3 ultra. got it direct from evga.
any thoughts on how this will perform with the setup listed above?
thanks for the info david!

[Starrskream]

I think XC might be "extra compact". But this is just a guess.

I wouldn't use two different video cards in the same system for gaming. I think many games will get confused and run on the wrong card / monitor. We see this a lot with laptops as well, where the game has to pick between the integrated video card card vs the discrete video card.

You might want to wait until the nVidia 4000 series is released in a few months. It should push down the prices of the 2000 and 3000 series.

I can't comment on how far you can overclocking individual video cards. I don't do it as computers are already unstable enough at the best of times. Stability is way more important than getting the last 5% of performance (for me).

so, in the the past ive run a gtx 770, and my current card.
essentially what i did was connect my main monitor to the more powerful card(Current one) and connected the other monitors to the weaker one. I dont game on the side monitors or use a surround view etc. IT worked for me, with little to no issues really. mostly i watch movies or have browser tabs open on them. biggest issue i ran into was when i was screen capturing or recording. OBS kinda freaked out when it was on one card trying to record the main monitor.