I've been looking around loads of forums and all I can find are comparisons of the ASUS vs the lower end 770 MSI Gaming edition. So the questions I pose to you oh so informed and technically minded people..... ASUS 770 DirectCU II OC or MSI 770 Lightning?
Things I am interested in are overclocking potential and overclocking software, temps, noise and differences in physical components.
I'll be spending my hard earned cash on either so please try and keep opionins from flowing into this thread as I'm more interested in fact.
I would personally go with the Lightning just because it goes really well with my motherboard (MSI Mpower Big Bang Z77) and also, I hear that its consistently one of the best cards you can get. I personally own a Asus 680 DirectCU II Top card, which I love. It's a beast of a card and it's really quite (I can barely hear it over my case fans, which is pretty impressive. Even at max load, it doesn't get super loud. Both of these are super awesome cards so I would just go with whatever card you prefer. I'm not sure if the DirectCU II version of the 770 is a triple slot card so that might be something that you want to consider if you end up going with an SLI configuration later because you might not be able to fit it onto the Mobo with another card.
The Asus GTX 770 is a 2 slot card. I believe all the new 700 series cards from Asus are dual slots. If you do go for a GTX 770, I would recommend you go for a 4gig version. Both of the coolers are nice and will help you tons with GPU Boost 2.0 and overclocking.
Thanks guys. the 4gb one for me would be pointless as I'm not intending to game over 1080p resolutions and also the cost difference is signifcant here in the UK. I've been reading some other personal reviews and some of my concerns are not customer service and RMA satisfaction. Anyone have any dealings with both ASUS and or MSI when it comes to RMAs?