HD7770 Crossfire Blue Pill Action

SonDa5

SonDa5

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I'm impressed with some crossfire results for HD7770/HD7750 in some of the reviews that I have read.
Actually looks like a good value compared to buying a HD7950.


Who is planning on doing a HD7770/HD7750 crossfire set up?

Any experiences?
 
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Incoming x770 from Sonda. Who didn't see this coming? lol

Anyway the performance doesn't look bad from the performance I have seen, but I think the cards aren't powerful enough to be worthwhile for CF. Should stick to high end cards for that.
 
No Sonda the 6770 cannot be flashed to a 7770!

I kid I kid
 
Crossfire only for higher end cards? Where is the logic in that?

A pair of 7770's in CF are right at GTX570-580 levels at 1080p. Much lower cost, power draw, heat, noise levels, etc, compared to the 580 especially. Perfect reason to Crossfire, in my opinion

I'm going to wait until more options are available and see how they compare.
 
Putting my chips down on the amd 7850 2gb being better value. 1 more month to wait!
 
Business6 said:
A pair of 7770's in CF are right at GTX570-580 levels at 1080p. Much lower cost, power draw, heat, noise levels, etc, compared to the 580 especially. Perfect reason to Crossfire, in my opinion
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Unless I'm mistaken, you can get a 570 for around $270 after rebates whereas 2x 7770 is more like $360. But yeah. compared to a GTX 580 it might be cheaper.
 
MavericK96 said:
Unless I'm mistaken, you can get a 570 for around $270 after rebates whereas 2x 7770 is more like $360. But yeah. compared to a GTX 580 it might be cheaper.
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MIR really arent rebates, they are more like the lottery. It's like a 50-50 chance of getting your money back.
 
DASHlT said:
MIR really arent rebates, they are more like the lottery. It's like a 50-50 chance of getting your money back.
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I guess it's a lottery that I've "won" 100% of the time, then.

In fact, there was a thread/poll awhile back and the vast majority of people got 90-100% of their rebates back. No offense, but I don't think your point even has much merit.
 
MavericK96 said:
I guess it's a lottery that I've "won" 100% of the time, then.

In fact, there was a thread/poll awhile back and the vast majority of people got 90-100% of their rebates back. No offense, but I don't think your point even has much merit.
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Couldnt tell ya. I havent made a purchase decision based off a MIR in years. The last time I tried one from Corsair. I never heard anything back.

If I see a product I buy with a MIR I ignore it.

Even my roommate who bought an Asus motherboard with a $40 MIR, Has been waiting 7 months now to get it back.
 
I agree that generally I will not make a purchase decision if it's like a $60+ rebate (mostly because that's quite a bit of money to have to wait on), but if it's less than that I usually have no problem.
 
MavericK96 said:
I agree that generally I will not make a purchase decision if it's like a $60+ rebate (mostly because that's quite a bit of money to have to wait on), but if it's less than that I usually have no problem.
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Either way, saying a product is $270 after MIR is a farce though. Lets say the the 570 had a $30 MIR, which makes it a $300 product. You still have to shell out $300 to get the card, then follow the MIR instructions to "MAYBE" get your $30 back (which is usually a pre-paid card that you will be charged to use anyway).

So saying a 570 GTX is $270 really isnt the truth. It really is a half truth.
 
DASHlT said:
Either way, saying a product is $270 after MIR is a farce though. Lets say the the 570 had a $30 MIR, which makes it a $300 product. You still have to shell out $300 to get the card, then follow the MIR instructions to "MAYBE" get your $30 back (which is usually a pre-paid card that you will be charged to use anyway).

So saying a 570 GTX is $270 really isnt the truth. It really is a half truth.
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Except that most people get their money back. If the rate is as high as 80%-90%, your expected return on a $30 rebate is still $24-27 dollars. Treating it like it's a $300 card, in that case, is irrational.

Besides, you shoudl go troll some other thread about rebates. This thread has to do with the capabilities of the 7770. Personally, I'd wait for the middle of the AMD lineup to come out before sinking cash into what may be an inferior card in terms of performance/value.
 
Paradoxex said:
Except that most people get their money back. If the rate is as high as 80%-90%, your expected return on a $30 rebate is still $24-27 dollars. Treating it like it's a $300 card, in that case, is irrational.

Besides, you shoudl go troll some other thread about rebates. This thread has to do with the capabilities of the 7770. Personally, I'd wait for the middle of the AMD lineup to come out before sinking cash into what may be an inferior card in terms of performance/value.
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So having a discussion is trolling?

/facepalm
 
Business6 said:
Crossfire only for higher end cards? Where is the logic in that?

A pair of 7770's in CF are right at GTX570-580 levels at 1080p. Much lower cost, power draw, heat, noise levels, etc, compared to the 580 especially. Perfect reason to Crossfire, in my opinion

I'm going to wait until more options are available and see how they compare.
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Bad crossfire drivers mean you are stuck with the performance of that lower end card you decided to crossfire. Getting the card that is at a similar performance level for around the same cost is a far better investment. I had a 5770 Crossfire setup for a few months and had numerous driver issues to the point I sold both off and eventually got a 560 Ti. Besides two of these will cost around $300 give or take a few bucks, a 7870 is going to be around that pricing point while being as fast or faster. That makes it even a worse investment imo.
 
xBanzai89 said:
Bad crossfire drivers mean you are stuck with the performance of that lower end card you decided to crossfire. Getting the card that is at a similar performance level for around the same cost is a far better investment. I had a 5770 Crossfire setup for a few months and had numerous driver issues to the point I sold both off and eventually got a 560 Ti. Besides two of these will cost around $300 give or take a few bucks, a 7870 is going to be around that pricing point while being as fast or faster. That makes it even a worse investment imo.
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Is that bad crossfire drivers, or the fact that trying to perfectly match up two cards with differing hardware capabilities is probably a bitch? Just the fact that it works at all is pretty impressive to me.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Is that bad crossfire drivers, or the fact that trying to perfectly match up two cards with differing hardware capabilities is probably a bitch? Just the fact that it works at all is pretty impressive to me.
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Bad drivers most likely. 5800 series were awful for CF for instance.
 
xBanzai89 said:
Bad drivers most likely. 5800 series were awful for CF for instance.
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Right, but so far 6000 and 7000 series CF scaling is very good. Complaining that pairing 2 unlike cards together forces you to the performance level of the slower card seems to be....stretching.
 
My success rate with mail in rebates has been over 90%. I shop almost completely at newegg and never remember not getting my rebates , but sometimes i forget they are coming by the time they show up....

I am sure the 7770 are nice cards and crossfire are probably decent, but at their price it doesnt make sense. Your much better off with a pair of 6870s not to mention save $60 in the process. my XFX 6870 scored P4288 on 3dmark2011, a 7770 OC edition is around P3550

Unless your really constrained by your PSU id stick with the 6000 series until they are out of stock or 7000 is cheaper.
 
DASHlT said:
Couldnt tell ya. I havent made a purchase decision based off a MIR in years. The last time I tried one from Corsair. I never heard anything back.

If I see a product I buy with a MIR I ignore it.

Even my roommate who bought an Asus motherboard with a $40 MIR, Has been waiting 7 months now to get it back.
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your not the only one.. i've never had a rebate from corsair(4 total) or the 1 from asus ever work but then again i never bought those products for the rebate, just figured it was icing on the cake if they actually worked.. out of all rebates i've done(i use to live 10 minutes from a fry's so take a guess how many i've done) i think 3 of them actually went through.

i still think the best one i had was a 10 dollar MIR that took 4 years to get to me, lol. to bad the motherboard it was for died 2 years before that.
 
cfx/sli is still too problematic imho. a single powerful and efficient card is the route i'd go
 
I think it depends.
If the price for two cards is drasticly lower than the single card price I feel its worth it.
My dual 6870s were wonderful back in the day and I cannot think of a single game I had issues with.
Another thing to factor in is that you should make sure that the performance of a single card in your dual card rig is enough for you. Basicly make sure that you will be able to deal with using only one GPU. Purchase a card that is powerful enough that when the SLi or CF profiles are no good, you can still game without issue.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Right, but so far 6000 and 7000 series CF scaling is very good. Complaining that pairing 2 unlike cards together forces you to the performance level of the slower card seems to be....stretching.
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No Iits true. People have been complaining a lot about CF support with the 7900 series from what i have seen. AMD never seems to be on the ball for releasing CF drivers on new releases. I was pulling my hair out of The Witcher 2. That was when I said I'm done with CF. SLI wasn't even that much of a head ache for me compared to when I had my 7900 GT SLI setup back in 2006. AMD is good for single card solutions, but I would be wary of doing any kind of CF with them.

@ NG}Fidel - I agree the 6870 was a smart move for CF given that it did out do any single GPU out at the time. However the 7770 does not and the 7870 will likely out perform for possibly less money. That is why I do not see the 7770 worth being CF.
 
Yeah I dont see the appeal in CFing the 7770.
To me that card begs to be in a HTPC or as a gaming card for a younger sibling.
If you plan on CFing or SLiing then I recomend upper mid range at the least.
Better resale value and better performance.
 
psyside said:
Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity.
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2xHD7770 in cross fire out performing single HD7950 or GTX580 card on certain games and applications for much less money is not stupidity. This is a hot deal that those that can run crossfire can take advantage of.

Antimatter can end the universe.
 
SonDa5 and his obsession with running multiple weak / mid range cards strikes again.. Good luck with that buddy, maybe it'll be different than the (literal) 4+ last few times...
 
silent-circuit said:
SonDa5 and his obsession with running multiple weak / mid range cards strikes again.. Good luck with that buddy, maybe it'll be different than the (literal) 4+ last few times...
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I'm a fan of all well made computer hardware.

Do you deny that 2xHD7770s in Crossfire can out perform a single GTX580 or HD7950 on certain games or applications?

Just because you are not a fan of the HD7770 doesn't mean that the cards don't perform well.


The cards may not be for you but for others they could be the perfect option for their system or budget.
 
They won't out perform my dual 6950 2GB setup I paid $400 for... and I'd certainly never trade said 6950s for them. Try again.

It's never a good idea to run weak cards in CrossfireX or SLI. There's really no exception to this rule, no matter how badly it seems you want there to be.
 
silent-circuit said:
They won't out perform my dual 6950 2GB setup I paid $400 for... and I'd certainly never trade said 6950s for them. Try again.
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At launch there is no way you bought 2 HD6950s for $400.

I'm sure later on down the road there will be some substantial hot deals on the HD7770. Also your HD6950s are going to burn up much more power and require a much more powerful PSU than 2 HD7770s. So your comments on your experience isn't the typical experience that everyone is going to have and on power usage it is easy to see that the HD7770s will beat the HD6950s.
 
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So they barely beat one of my cards, if they beat it at all, and a 6950/6970 often times beats them out. They're $160 each, and you can get a used 6950 2GB (that will probably unlock to a 6970) for about $200.

$200 for consistently high performance, or $320 for often times less performance, more points of failure, more fan noise, more heat over all. How does this make sense? Ever? SonDa5's obsession with low end multi-GPU (which is never really worthwhile) strikes again.

Also, I never claimed to buy my cards at launch. I bought the first for $320 shipped, $300 AR quite some time ago (I can check Newegg if it matters that much) and the second off FS/FT a few months ago for $215 shipped. Both unlock and OC to well above 6970 stock clocks.
 
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Not a good idea to buy two lesser cards for CF just to match what a single higher card can do. You're not "beating the system," here, folks. Just get the single card.
Not going to go over all of the disadvantages of CF again.
 
7770 = 1gb vram
7950 = 3gb vram

that alone will be a problem with some newer games that use more than 1gb of vram on high settings (crysis 2, battlefield 3). plus hitting vram caps with crossfire enabled causes your entire game to pause while it offloads and loads into the vram (at least in my experiences)

even though 2x7770's can match the performance of 1 high end card, there's no guarantee it will. Some games (take Skyrim for example) will only give you the performance of 1 card). Make sure you are content with having some games only give you the performance of 1 7770 before you buy 2 of them.

also, 1 higher end card will give you an overall smoother framerate. 2x7770's might match the highs, but the mininum framerates will be higher on a single high end card vs the 2 lower end cards. Plus you shouldn't get any pesky stutter issues that surface with dual gpu setups.


my recommendation:

If you can already afford the single higher end card, get the single card, then crossfire that one down the road when it drops in price.
 
I love the idea of running multiple cheap cards together. I was sad when it became clear that they didn't want me running 3 or 4 in crossfire after the 4000 line. Trifire now relegated to the absolute top of the line where it isn't needed. If I could run triple crossfire with 7770's I would have bought three on release day.

Majinhoju said:
If you can already afford the single higher end card, get the single card, then crossfire that one down the road when it drops in price.
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That isn't my experience. By the time I feel I should upgrade it's always to the next generation.
 
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xBanzai89 said:
Bad crossfire drivers mean you are stuck with the performance of that lower end card you decided to crossfire. Getting the card that is at a similar performance level for around the same cost is a far better investment. I had a 5770 Crossfire setup for a few months and had numerous driver issues to the point I sold both off and eventually got a 560 Ti. Besides two of these will cost around $300 give or take a few bucks, a 7870 is going to be around that pricing point while being as fast or faster. That makes it even a worse investment imo.
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No, it won't. 7770 CFX is on par with 7950 performance. 7870 will come in between 570 and 580 performance.

A better deal at the moment is 6870 CFX, faster than the 7770, at the same price point.
 
257Tony said:
No, it won't. 7770 CFX is on par with 7950 performance. 7870 will come in between 570 and 580 performance.
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Between those 2 choices i'd take a 7870. I'd rather have guaranteed 570-580 performance than on and off 7950 performance.
 
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