Friday, December 7th 2012
Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" Can Pair with HD 7900 Series in CrossFireX
While testing Club 3D Radeon HD 7870 jokerCard, one of the three Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" graphics cards you can buy, we discovered that it can pair with Radeon HD 7900 series cards in CrossFireX. Our VGA testing lab, which has battened down the hatches for winter (lack of VGA launches), spent a lot of time toying with Club 3D's card and while brainstorming for the review's conclusion, it came up that HD 7870 Tahiti LE is "bad" because it can't pair with common HD 7870 or HD 7850 "Pitcairn" graphics cards. A bulb supernova just went off over our heads: "...sure Tahiti LE won't pair with Pitcairn, but will it pair with HD 7900 series "Tahiti", which have more stream processors, and more memory?" The answer turned out to be yes!
We successfully managed to pair the Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard with a Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 (reference). We casually put it through 3DMark 11 and Sleeping Dogs, and found the contraptions to scale fairly well. We noticed some micro-stutter in 3DMark 11, but Sleeping Dogs felt smooth. This could be great news for current HD 7900 series owners who can upgrade to CrossFire for a modest $249~269. We even tried our luck at unlocking disabled shaders (stream processors), which didn't work. AMD used the mod-proof fuses method to lock the shaders. Check out our Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard review.
We successfully managed to pair the Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard with a Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 (reference). We casually put it through 3DMark 11 and Sleeping Dogs, and found the contraptions to scale fairly well. We noticed some micro-stutter in 3DMark 11, but Sleeping Dogs felt smooth. This could be great news for current HD 7900 series owners who can upgrade to CrossFire for a modest $249~269. We even tried our luck at unlocking disabled shaders (stream processors), which didn't work. AMD used the mod-proof fuses method to lock the shaders. Check out our Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard review.
39 Comments on Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" Can Pair with HD 7900 Series in CrossFireX
I'd be interested to see how 7950+7930 performs in CF vs. 2*7950.
(Yeah, I just called it a 7930 :eek:)
So after cracking hours of tech reviews and RMA rates... NO SAPPHIRES OR GIGABYTES. Those cheapskates uses poor components that result in abnormalities, like ringing inductors at load and poor OC with artifacts... ASUS, MSI and some others frankly doesn't suffer from it at such rates. Myself I took the OEM one, because of the turbine solution only.
www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/296/AMD_Radeon_HD_7970.html
www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/365/AMD_Radeon_HD_7970_GHz_Edition_(PCIe_3.0_x16).html
;)
Is it not the same as the LE's?
Specs seem the same, maybe I'm missing something
At erocker
"We successfully managed to pair the Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard with a Radeon HD 7950 and HD 7970 (reference). We casually put it through 3DMark 11 and Sleeping Dogs, and found the contraptions to scale fairly well. We noticed some micro-stutter in 3DMark 11, but Sleeping Dogs felt smooth. This could be great news for current HD 7900 series owners who can upgrade to CrossFire for a modest $249~269. We even tried our luck at unlocking disabled shaders (stream processors), which didn't work. AMD used the mod-proof fuses method to lock the shaders. Check out our Club 3D HD 7870 jokerCard review."
From the OP
What question were u answering there.
(Upgrade as in adding a 2nd or 3rd card)
"The SAPPHIRE HD 7870 XT with Boost delivers a new price:performance point to the series. It is based on AMD's Tahiti architecture with its 256-bit memory interface, and 1536 stream processors and 96 Texture units, unlike the remainder of the HD 7800 series that uses the Pitcairn architecture. Configured with 2GB of high speed GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz (6GHz effective) the SAPPPHIRE HD 7870 XT has a core clock of 925MHz which dynamically rises to 975MHz with PowerTune Boost, AMDs dynamic performance enhancement for games."
More info here: www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/graphics-cards/sapphire-radeon-hd-7870-xt-1130535/review
I was _this_ close to getting it, but ended up getting the PowerColor MYST instead because it was cheaper, and the Sapphire was sold out anyway. I'm told the Sapphire has a better cooler, so that might be worth it for the extra cost of an aftermarket cooler for people planning on OC.