Can I CrossFire 2 different brands?

[david42one]

I currently have an MSI 6950, I want to buy a 2nd for crossfire but the card I have is a reference board that has been discontinued. Can I buy a Sapphire card and crossfire them?

Card I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127555
Card I'm considering: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102945

Additional questions that I'd love to have answered-

Should I overclock 1 so that they are both running at the same speeds?
Should I flash the bios on my reference board so they are both using the same bios?
Should I use 1 or 2 bridge connectors?
Which should I use as the master graphics card?
Should I plug both my monitors into the master card, or 1 monitor into each card?

Thanks very much for reading this

 

[purple stain]

Generally speaking all 6950's and 6970's can be crossfired.Of course it's recommended that you use the same Brand,Model,etc.But it should work either way.

What are your full system specs?

What is the make/model of your PSU?

The Sapphire card you have selected isn't O.C.'d in any way it just has a very good aftermarket heatsink.But if you did O.C. they would have to match in speeds.

As I stated before all 6950's and 6970's are compatible with each other so their's no need to flash the BIOS.

The top card is the master card and with AMD you only plug monitors into the top card.

Since your MSI card is a reference it probably doesn't have great cooling so if you do decide to go for this crossfire I would suggest putting the MSI card on the bottom so it gets the most air it can.The Sapphire card should have no problem dealing with the extra heat.

 

[david42one]

Generally speaking all 6950's and 6970's can be crossfired.Of course it's recommended that you use the same Brand,Model,etc.But it should work either way.

What are your full system specs?

What is the make/model of your PSU?

The Sapphire card you have selected isn't O.C.'d in any way it just has a very good aftermarket heatsink.But if you did O.C. they would have to match in speeds.

As I stated before all 6950's and 6970's are compatible with each other so their's no need to flash the BIOS.

The top card is the master card and with AMD you only plug monitors into the top card.

Since your MSI card is a reference it probably doesn't have great cooling so if you do decide to go for this crossfire I would suggest putting the MSI card on the bottom so it gets the most air it can.The Sapphire card should have no problem dealing with the extra heat.

Here's a link to my PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171055

Full system specs:

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case
Asus Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard
AMD Phenom II 1100T BE 3.3GHz (overclocked to 4GHz) Six-Core Processor
Cooler Master 1200W Power Supply
16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory
Crucial C300 128GB SATA III Solid State Drive (OS, applications)
2x Hitachi 2TB SATA Hard Drives (data storage, raid-1)
ATI Radeon HD 6950 2GB Video Card (overclocked to 6970 speeds)
ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 Sound card
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

 

[purple stain]

Was wondering if you system and PSU would be up to the task of a 6950 crossfire and it definitly seems it will.

Do you have any other questions?

Also I was reading around and it seems to be a controversy as to use 1 or 2 Bridge's for a dual crossfire.Some say that it increase's FPS maybe 2-5.So it's not a huge gain but it is a gain.

 

[david42one]

Yup, I designed this system specifically to be a badass crossfire gaming rig. My plan was to wait a bit before I bought another 6950 but was torn as my motherboard supports dual at x16 so it seemed a waste to only have 1 card. Also the 6950 supposedly scales amazingly well in crossfire. Anyway I was maintaining self-control until I saw this board came with a free copy of the new Deus Ex game, and that's all she wrote.

Thanks for all the info, I guess it can't do any harm to use 2 bridges and may increase performance.

 

[david42one]

Best answer selected by david42one.

 

[purple stain]

Yes the 68xx and 69xx series have really good scaling compared to last gen.

Welcome

Goodluck
Happy Gaming