Crossfire ASUS 7970 Direct CU2 with Gigabyte Z87-D3HP

[HungryHippos]

Considering getting another ASUS 7970 Direct CU2 for my board to run in Crossfire.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-273-AS

I know that the second PCI-E slot on the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP is limited to 4x, and the ASUS 7970 CU2 cards are 3 slot models, so wanted some opinions from people before I went ahead and do it. Is the spacing going to be a problem here?

I am gaming at 2560 * 1440 so I need some horse power, and I figure a second 7970 in Crossfire would keep me going for hopefully around 3 years or so before I even needed to consider upgrading my Graphics again.

Shame I missed the deal the other day with the 7950's as two of those in Crossfire would have worked out only £100 more than one of these 7970's. I can still return the 7970 I have under DSR if I had to but ultimately would rather not unless I'm making savings elsewhere.

I am running the i7 4770K Haswell processor so that should be fine for Crossfire either way.

 

[teppic]

You're not going to have any space between the two cards, so heat will be a problem. You could crossfire with a different 7970, i.e. a 2 slot card.

Running at 8x4x isn't going to be a serious issue with PCI-E 3.0.

 

[Doomedspeed]

You're not going to have any space between the two cards, so heat will be a problem. You could crossfire with a different 7970, i.e. a 2 slot card.
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This is quite common though, obviously not ideal but a lot of people do it..

 

[teppic]

This is quite common though, obviously not ideal but a lot of people do it..

Two three slot cards aren't all that common. The 7970s overclocked will put out quite a bit of heat. But if you don't overclock you may as well go for 2x7950s (rear exhaust) and overclock those for the same performance as stock 2x7970s.

 

[HungryHippos]

I'm not entirely keen on running 2 different cards here really, if it came to that it was a bad idea I would rather send the 7970 back and get two 7950's instead that were identical from the off.

For me low noise is important, so I wouldn't want to crossfire two noisy cards. The 7970 so far seems reasonably quiet to me.

The 7950's at £160 the other day were a steal, wonder if we would see any more deals like that for them, the HIS ones are back up to £185 now which makes them less attractive as an alternative.

 

[teppic]

There's no harm in running different cards. If you want to run two Asus 7970s you'll need a spacious case and very good air flow (something like the Corsair Carbide 540).

The HIS cards are pretty quiet, and have no real issue with temps.

 

[MG42Maniac]

I've got the Z87X-D3H with 2 HIS 7950s and they fit but I have no spare PCI-E slots. Although the K2 cooler blocks off the top one so if I had a smaller CPU cooler I would have a spare slot.

The fact these cards exhaust heat was the main reason I got them - makes them ideal for crossfire. I paid £190 each for them and considered them a very good buy. After I sold off all the games I think the true cost was £260.

 

[HungryHippos]

I've got the Z87X-D3H with 2 HIS 7950s and they fit but I have no spare PCI-E slots. Although the K2 cooler blocks off the top one so if I had a smaller CPU cooler I would have a spare slot.

The fact these cards exhaust heat was the main reason I got them - makes them ideal for crossfire. I paid £190 each for them and considered them a very good buy. After I sold off all the games I think the true cost was £260.

Thanks, to save the hassle I am thinking just getting another ASUS 7970 CU2 would be OK, I am not planning to massively overclock them or anything so I don't think I would be getting too high temps.

I know I can get other 7970's to mix and match, but the next cheapest ones are more expensive by £30 or so so I would effectively be paying that to get a bigger gap between the cards.

There's no harm in running different cards. If you want to run two Asus 7970s you'll need a spacious case and very good air flow (something like the Corsair Carbide 540).

The HIS cards are pretty quiet, and have no real issue with temps.

It's a reasonable case, Corsair 650D. I don't use any other PCI slots, it has a large case fan on the top extracting, with another large one at the front for the intake. I don't perceive heat to be a massive issue hopefully!