Mixed 6970's crossfire monitor connection and power plug questsions

[ender1598]

I've had an Asus EAH 6970 since January and just last week bought an EAH 6970 DCII to go crossfire in my Asus P6T motherboard. I was too eager when ordering and now that it's here I realize I have a few issues...

With my original card I had two of my screens plugged in through DVI and the third through a DVI to Displayport mini adapter. Now that I have the new card I realize it doesn't have any mini adapters on it. If I plug in the DCII into the first PCI Express sloth can I have my two DVI screens plugged into it and the third screen plugged into the second card? Or should I leave my current card where it is and not mess with the plugs and just add the DCII below it? Either way it seems like the card will be hitting the tops of the onboard USB plugs and it'll be a very tight fit.

The other issue has to do with power plugs. My current Antec 850 Watt power supply has two 6 pin plugs and two 8 pin plugs for video cards. The DCII can use both 8 pin plugs but the older 6970 requires one 8 and one 6. Is there any sort of hack I can use to get it working with this power supply or do I just need to get a something new like a Corsair TX850?

Thanks for any help or insight into this predicament!

 

[sirmonkey1985]

just add the DCII below it. both cards will run at the slower clocks of which ever card is the slowest. then overclock them to the correct clocks. crossfireX is not picky about the card models you use. as long as they use the same architecture, E.G 6900 series with 6900 series and 6800 with 6800 and so on. also you can reverse the cards and use the bottom card as the display card still. its just up to you and how you want to lay it out. some motherboards allow you to select which pci-e slot you want to be the primary display slot on boot. sometimes they don't and force the top card to be the boot display card. just test it out and see if it works for you.

as far as the power supply goes you can get a 6 pin to 8 pin converter cable. or 1/2 molex to 8 pin.

 

[ender1598]

Just a quick update. I got the 6 to 8 pin converter from Newegg and it works perfectly. I left my old card in the primary slot since I don't have a mini DP connection on the new card. Used the original 8 pin plugs for the new card and the 6 pin and adapter for the old card. The only unexpected problem is when both cards are hitting full load my APC battery backup starts beeping at me. I just plugged it into the surge side of things and might get a larger UPS in the future.