Do I need identical cards to X-Fire?

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Creepin_D

[H]ard|Gawd
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I bought my Sapphire 7970 back when it was first released. Thinking about buying another, but I am unsure if I need to buy the identical card to get X-Fire to work. Can I use any 7970?
 
Creepin_D said:
I bought my Sapphire 7970 back when it was first released. Thinking about buying another, but I am unsure if I need to buy the identical card to get X-Fire to work. Can I use any 7970?
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Yes you can, but 1 will downclock to the other speeds if one if faster then the other.

Like if you have a 925mhz edition, and you got a 1ghz edition now. One would downclock to the other.
 
Yep, as long as its in the same family i.e. 79xx
But, like DASHlT said if they are different speeds you will be limited to the slowest card.
 
Creepin_D said:
Thanks, so I am thinking of getting another card and water cooling both of them. Problem is, the only water blocks I can find are designed for reference boards.

How do I know if the latest baseline 7970 from Sapphire is using the reference design?
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In most cases, if you have the stock reference cooler it's a reference card. I think the only company bad about changing up the card, but keeping the stock cooler is XFX.

With that being said, the best way is to look at diagrams online to see the differences between the reference and non reference versions. This is what I had to do when I was helping a friend of mine water cool his 6970 + 6990 GPUs. He wasn't sure if the 6970 was a reference or non reference design. So we took it apart, compared it with pictures and confirmed.

Also you might be able to call Sapphire and ask them.
 
Unless you got some Vapor-X model. i THINK almost all sapphire 7970 in the begining were reference models, but yea make 100% sure it is first before buying a water block.
 
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