I had 2 XFX 7970 black Editions running in crossfireX until a few months ago and they worked well with only one major glitch (for me anyways); my display would be completely corrupt and unreadable using Display Port when running Terabyte or the like in "DOS mode". I had to switch to DVI to create my system images. Safemode, while readable, was very distorted. Other than that, I'ved found NVIDIA drivers to be very subpar compared to AMD when gaming....glitchy, latency issues, randomly crashing in game....none of which I experienced with AMD. The 1 and 3 slots will allow x16 and the cards run at GEN3 without any issue. EVGA sells dressed up "hardbridges"-don't know if they replace the "soft" RIVE ones though.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64
ASUS Rampage IV EXTREME/BF3 motherboard
Intel Core i7 3960X CPU @ 3.3G (stock) (BIOS 4206)
Zalman CNPS9900MAX-B Headsink
64GB (8 x 8GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series DDR3 2133 (xmp profile 1)
Seasonic ATX 1000W 80PLUS Platinum Power Supply
LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray writer
2*Western Digital Velociraptor 500GB (64mb cache) in RAID0 on the x79 at SATA 3
2*Western Digital Velociraptor 1000GB (64mb cache) (1Tb) on the x79 at SATA 2
2*ASUS GTX780-3GD5 SLI at GEN 2
Auzentech X-Fi Hometheater HD Audio Card at GEN 2
Silverstone Temjin TJ10B-W NVIDIA Edition Case
TJ10 USB 3 upgrade kit
1*Noctua NF-S12B FLX 120mm, 4*Noctua NF-P12 120mm Chassis Fans
Samsung SyncMaster S27A850D 27" LED PLS Monitor @ 2560x1440
Canon MP560 series Printer
Logitech G9x Gaming Laser Mouse
SteelSeries 6G V2 Mechanical Keyboard
APC Smart-UPS SMT2200

No problems here.

I thought the ones EVGA had were for SLI not Crossfire?

My mistake; should have read a little closer. You're absolutely right.

rmilyard wrote:
So if using these cards in the 16x slot 1 and I believe 3 is there a crossfire connector long enough for this?
Also are there hard versions like the ROG SLI bridges?

They'll work just fine "right out of the box" with the 2-way crossfire bridge supplied in the RIVE. I was wrong about EVGA, so, that I kniow of no third party hard bridges.

The cable that comes with the cards will work but not much slack. I painted my connectors with a high gloss red to match the motherboard and cards.

Using 1 and 3 here no issues at all. Both at X16 and both running PCIE 3.0 (Gen 3).

Well I got the 2 Gigabyte 7970 the other day however haven't been able to try them because my EK Triple CSQ bridge doesn't come till Monday! Crap.... Dunno if will have time during week to install them.