Powercolor 7870 or Gigabyte 7850 to run with a 7850

I would take an identical card to make sure they'll work together (as Crossfire could possibly run with different card but it have some issues like bad scaling or flickering)

In theory that should work with the 7870 and the 7850 but in my opinion, i prefer to have two identical cards for the look and it'll work with less issues...

with all the reports i have heard about these in crossfire i wouldn't even bother. many people are reporting fps drops, stuttering, higher average fps but not as smooth as single card etc, same old crossfire problems. I would suggest selling your 7850 and get a single better card. crossfire is for people who already have the fastest single card available and need more power. Also, your motherboard will make it even worse since the second slot is a 4x pcie slot. this will make it stutter like a bitch. I STRONGLY advise against crossfire on this board.

Having a different brand is fine, but two things:

1) Don't pair a 7870 with a 7850 - the 7870 will downclock, so you'll just be wasting money.

2) powercolor makes a 7870 XT edition - it's not even the same chip as a normal 7870, so won't pair at all.

Crossfire / SLI with the same card.

Ok thanks for the advice guys!

Best answer selected by chrisafp07.

Thanks for the best answer  

Aim to sell your 7850 for about $100 I would say (cheapest 2GB 7850 I have seen yet is $150 after MIR and that was a stock one and the gigabyte card is factory OC'd + custom cooler and AFAIK, gigabyte has a transferable warranty)

Going a higher end card also allows for a higher end CF in the future

Here is the pricing for 7870XT and 7950 right now

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=124,71&sort...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tahiti-le-7870-7930...

This topic has been closed by Maziar