Crossfire question

[rcaderz01]

Can you shove in a non-reference card with a reference one? For example a gigabyte 6970 with an asus one? Too bad all the good 6970s are out of stock on newegg...

 

[Supernova1138]

Yes you can use a non-reference and reference card in Crossfire. If the non-reference card has a factory overclock it will run at the speed of the slower card when used in Crossfire with a reference card. Generally speaking the differences between reference and non-reference is the coolers, and the output ports at the back of the card, there is no actual difference in the graphics hardware, aside from factory overclocked models which are clocked higher than the reference model.

 

[rcaderz01]

But does it matter if in crossfire my gigabyte 6970 has a different bios than the second one?

 

[Supernova1138]

If you are using a flashed 6950 you can still crossfire it, but the genuine 6970 will run at the clockspeeds of the flashed 6950. You could even Crossfire a regular 6950 with a 6970 with the 6970 running at the 6950's speed. Aside from that the Gigabyte card should not have a different BIOS from any other 6970. The only difference between models is cooler, output ports, and sometimes factory overclock.

 

[rcaderz01]

Best answer selected by rcaderz01.