Just a brief relay of my experiences with these cards
Msi Gaming 290x- 1130/1450 stable
Msi Lightning 290x- 1200+/1500 stable
Asus DCu II 290x- 1130/haven't tried yet stable
Msi Gaming 290x
This card is the smallest, lightest and quietest at full fan speed of the bunch. Great card though. It has a nice Back plate with cut outs to allow air to penetrate the plate and cool the back side effectively and supports the card nicely allowing for minimal sag. The front plate covers all the vrm's and does a good job cooling them allowing the chips to maintain relatively low temps even overclocked. The core it's self is a decent overclocker, doing about a 1130 mhz with +.73mv and 1450 on the mem with 80% fan speed which is quiet on this card. Core temp is about 78-82c like this
Asus Dcu II 290x
I have to say, This is my 3rd try with one of these cards. First one was a dud out of the box from New Egg. Couldn't handle the factory overclock without artifacts or additional voltage.
Second one, which I got in trade from somebody, couldn't perform at agreed upon specs and had bad vrm temps upper 90's at stock with extended gameplay. Could handle decent overclocks initially(first 5-10 minutes) but anything over stock would eventually lead to artifacts or crashing. There was something up with the card.
Third card, which I got from the same guy as the second one is a gem. Vrm temps are still higher than the Msi card but this card is a decent example. Haven't really fianalized oc potential as I have only had it for about 30 hrs but it seems to atleast match the Msi Gaming card in potential clock speeds.
The biggest let down with the card is that there is no heatsink on 1 group of the 2 groups of vrm's which causes them to get quite hot (over 90c at stock vs the other group which is factory sinked and about 70c under load) an obvious oversight on Asus' part. It is easily remedied with short memory sinks. They do have to be shallow though because there isn't too much room between the heatsink and the vrms.
The sticky foam on the heatsink is to keep pressure on it from the DCu II cooler itself. After adding the sink to that group of vrms, temps plummeted by over 20c as per gpu-z. What was Asus thinking?
The heatsink itself is quite heafty and the fans themselves are quite powerful and can get noisy over 60%. It is nowhere near reference card loud but it is noticeable. The performance of the cooler on the other hand is impressive and the little bit of noise is worth the trade off. The DCu II cooler is definately a bit more capable than Msi's fantastic Twin Frozr on the gaming card.
290x Lightning
Where to begin? This card is full of so much win it's not even fair. Yes, the card is huge. Way bigger and heavier than the other 2 but what you get is worth it.
There is simply no comparison with the other cards heatsinks to the behemouth cooler on this card. At default fan profile @1200 mhz with +.175 mv the card has yet to break 70c. This card is silent and very cool running with unrivaled performance from the other cards.
While the card itself has 2x8pin and 1x6 pin, only the 2 8 pins are required to run. The 6 pin is for additional power. If you plug the 6 pin in the "lightning" logo lights up red full time. If you just run with the 2 8 pins it'll vary from green to blue and red depending on the gpu load.
I'm still testing the cards limit but I'm in love with it. Absolute beast of a card in every way.
If you guys have any questions ask away. I'm still tinkering with them and having fun.
Even though I loved my gk110's. 3x 780's, 2x Titans, 2x 780ti's, I find these cards to more more fun to play with. They make you work more to get the best out of them.
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