Widescreen Gaming Forum

I am thinking of adding a second HD 7970 to my machine. Current system has a single XFX HD 7970 Core Edition that I have had for almost a year with no problems. Several months ago I upgraded my display from three 19" 1280 x 1024 monitors and a Matrox triplehead-to-go to three BenQ XL2420 and Eyefinity. This has also worked well but the change from a 3840 x 1024 display to a 5760 x 1080 and the 120 HZ refresh rate capability has made me desire more graphics power. My main use for the machine is on my sim-racing rig and rFactor2. When I turn the graphics setting up (HDR and oh say, 4XAA) then I can see my frame rates plunge (sometimes below 30 fps) and I can feel the difference in the driving. But it does look sweet!

So I was thinking of adding another card and going for Crossfire. Apparently XFX no longer makes the Core Edition Model, although it seems to be available on Amazon at what seems like an outrageous price - $500+. I have searched and found some answers that seem to say I can mix two different cards as long as they are both reference models and maybe I need to make sure they both are clocked/overclocked the same. There are several choices for reference design cards at or below $400.

My XFX card has the original one-fan and exhaust out the back while most of the newer cards sport two fans and appear to exhaust inside the case. So I would have to evaluate the effect on overall cooling performance.

Does anyone here have any experience with mixing 7970 card models and/or manufacturers like this? If so, what advice can you give me? Thanks.


Dave Bradley

Hi

You can mix and match different AMD 7970 cards from different brands together no problem, CrossFireX is quite flexible like that.
You may be interested in the compatibility matrix here.. http://www.wsgf.org/article/amd-crossfi ... ity-matrix

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Thanks for the welcome and the response. I am a long time reader here, almost never poster. Most of the little I know about wide-screen gaming was learned here. The compatibility matrix was indeed interesting. I did not realize that I could even add a 7950 as the 2nd card. That was intriguing but I think I will go with a 7970.

Dave Bradley