There are *no* reviews out there of 7850 crossfire.

I'm really thinking about getting another one. I want to be able to max out all my games at 1080p with at least 4xAA. Right now I'm getting 40-60fps in my demanding games like Crysis, Crysis 2, and Battlefield 3.

Would a pair of these cards soundly beat a GTX 680?

They have more stock where I bought my first 7850 so I could have another one for $230 shipped.

Yes, where CrossFire scales well.

from the other mystery card thread

What about heat and noise?

I don't know how the cards would do in that regard.

My current 7850 is inaudible over my case fans even overclocked while gaming. It hits 75C. With a pair of them it would definitely get worse, but I could mitigate it by lowering the clockspeeds and/or getting better cooling.

SB I remember you not wanting to spend more then $200, looks like you got a case of upgrade fever. I would check to see how much of a performance hit will come from 4x bandwidth on your second slot. Since your now considering spending upwards of $500 have you considered returning the 7850 and picking up a gtx 680 or 7970? I believe apoppin posted a 7970 for $450 with dirt 3.

Yes, I do have upgrade fever.

My total spent will be $460. Would a 7970 be as fast as a pair of 7850s though? I can't find any reviews for a good comparison. I'm thinking that the 7850s would be 50% faster if the game scales well.

So $460 plus cooling, if any. That is still reasonable but now you have the issues of CrossFire

Are you not happy enough with single GPU performance? If not, i'd say go for it and then you will know about CrossFire. Yes, if a pair of 7850s are faster than GTX 680, they are faster than 7970

Sure there are - you just got to know how to look

Must...resist...upgrading.

I wonder if the new card would pay for itself in Bitcoins.

So far I have generated 0.2 of a Bitcoin with about 10 hours of GPU usage. That means I can generate about 1/2 of a bitcoin per day, which I think is around $8. If that's accurate and if I had a pair of cards, that would mean $16/day and $480/month. It can't be right, though. I'll have to give it some more time to see how many Bitcoins I actually generate. Perhaps I've given it more than 10 hours of usage *shrug*.

I'm not completely happy with my single GPU performance BTW. I find that in Crysis 2 I'm in the 30s way too much. It fluctuates alot; in some scenes I'm stuck at 30fps, but then indoors it's pegged at 60fps. Battlefield 3 runs beautifully on Ultra with 2xAA instead of the default 4xAA. Crysis is generally around 50fps which is quite good but I would like to run it with AA; same with Crysis 2, and I *will* be buying Crysis 3 so I think I will need the GPU power.

Well now you got a review to drool over