In search of a good 7770 for crossfire.

I personally would purchase the same model that you currently have as long as you have proper spacing on your motherboard (i.e. able to leave 1 slot open between cards) - you should have enough air flow. Otherwise if spacing is an issue, reference design is generally the best.

I would advise against HD 7770 CF. A single GPU is always better than a multi GPU setup. sell your HD 7770 and get a HD 7870. you can avoid microstuttering and other problems like CF profile availability and scaling.

Unfortunately though, not everyone has the $ to "throw away" an old card thats working fine to spend $ on a new one, especially when its cheaper to buy a 7770. Long term yes youre right: its probably just as expensive as a 7850. BUT its hard to justify that in the short when you have to spend 220$ vs 110$. Short term your brain only sees that 100$ difference, and short term your wallet does as well. If you can sell it, raghu is right, go with the nicer single card. Its not always easy to sell a GFX card though (in my experiences at least).

Since he has a 7770 already, crossfire ends up being cheaper on the wallet. A 7770 can be had for as little as 100$, whereas a 7850 costs around 200$ (both before taxes obviously).

It becomes increasingly hard to justify a single card upgrade solution when the 7770 can be had for so little. Yes you introduce issues, but saving that 100$ means a lot, to me at minimum.

APPLEG took the words outta my mouth. If you can, buy an identical card. So, since you have a Sapphire 7770, buy a Sapphire 7770. If you cannot buy an identical card for whatever reason (cost, availability, etc), then make sure you buy a card thats as close as possible. Basically make sure the board/chipset underneath is identical. If its a 1gb card, make the next one 1gb. If the mem speed is 1000mhz, try and get another thats 1000mhz. Try and get as much identical as possible.

You can always overclock/underclock a cards frequencies to match its brother, but things become much more difficult (and impossible in some instances) when there are other big differences. EG: a 7850 1GB will have big problems with a 7850 2GB. Furthermore, depending on the card, there sometimes can be revision differences that create problems. If you choose a different second card, look into that combination specifically.

Old example: Back in the day, the 88GT and 98GT were actually the same, despite different names, so they could SLI (after a bios update). This is just an example of an opposite situation where different cards are the SAME! Whatever second card you pick, make sure you do some HW and guarantee its effectiveness in CF.

Good luck! I'm thinking of a CF 7770 in the future if I go with a 7770 today when I make my purchases, so I know the EXACT boat youre in.
Edited by kmac20 - 11/10/12 at 6:03am

Nice in theory, but what PSU ? What Mo-Bo ?

Sigh !

dunx
Edited by 2002dunx - 11/10/12 at 6:06am

XION 600W, never heard of it ever....

Cheap, optimistic, garish. Might just manage two cards with a six pin each...

Maybe

dunx

Those xions are pretty terrible. They come in prebuilt cyberpower/ibuypower rigs. I don't know that I would trust them to run a xfire config, even power sippers like 7770's. in fact, no, I definitely would avoid that. I'm quite sure 600w is their absolute peak, probably with lots of ripple that will put your board, cards and CPU at risk.


Sent From My Phone When I Should Doing Something Productive....

The Xion I have I"ve had for 5 years, and still works absolutely perfectly. It was not a cheap-o Xion, it was one of their more expensive models at the time. I have heard/seen the cheaper Xions and they are pretty terrible, youre correct. This one however has never let me down, never had huge fluctuations or differences. The only reason its not hitting 600W anymore is because its half a decade old. I have used a meter to test it before as well, although i broke it recently so I cannot see what it is currently putting out.

Half a decade of use from the XION and still going. I'd say thats far off from terrible.

But, this isn't for me anyway......thats MY PSU, not the OPs.

If anyone was interested This is my Xion PSU. Youre both right, it was definitely a hit or miss PSU. Some people got Dead ones, then others are like me and still have em working after years.

Once again though, the OP has the question, not me. I wont be CF'ing for awhile, if ever.
Edited by kmac20 - 11/10/12 at 6:27am

But then you have to realize your Computer in your rig signature only uses around 300W IF!
Why not try and test it a 450 or more? I wanna see it blow.