Windforce or Directcu?

I

Ikasu

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 24, 2007
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Torn between nabbing a two r9 290's...Choosing between a Asus Directcu model or the Gigabyte Windforce. Any recommendations? Never had a Windforce series, or gigabyte graphics card in general. Same for Asus, as I usually sticked to XFX for it's double lifetime warranty for AMD cards which is now non-existent. Any advice? :(
 
The XFX with the new cooler is rumored to be improved.

MSI gaming appears good.

Asus gpu support is horrible.

The gigabyte has heat pipes which don't touch the die so it's not ideal.

If you can't find MSI gaming, or TRI-X, nor the new XFX (try read a review first on it), then and only then would I consider those two options and it'd have to be the gigabyte.
 
By experience....
Asus -many products feature rich; but the worst support provider
Gigabyte -some products feature rich; good RMA support
Sapphire -products are simple, sometimes bland, not much software updates; never had an RMA issue with them
MSI -products improved; good RMA support
XFX -good/solid products, many feature rich; over-priced in EU; love the RMA support
EVGA -Nvidia only; good/solid products, too much marketing hype on products; over-priced in EU; but the best RMA support I've worked with so far;

In my opinion, between the 2 choices you have, I will go with Gigabyte: for simplicity and no hassle RMA support
 
wand3r3r said:
The gigabyte has heat pipes which don't touch the die so it's not ideal.
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None of the retail 290's have this issue, it was a translation problem with tomshardware.

I have a Gigabyte 290 OC WF and it runs cool 'n' quiet ;)
 
Still, heat pipes do not touch directly the core. I do not think that WF cooler is that good. QC is a bit off and the fans have rattling issues.
 
Mining with the core @100% for the last 40+ hours and temp = 75 celcius = there are no issues with the coolers on the retail cards.

Gigabyte have already stated that the issue with the coolers was restricted to 30 review samples, but of course if you don't want to accept that......

It would be great if you could stop presenting your opinion as fact, especially when the actual facts bear no resemblance to your opinion.
 
I've had an Asus DCII, an MSI Twin Frozr III and a Gigabyte Windforce. All worked well. The Windforce has been the quietest of the lot.
 
If you go with the windforce (I would not recommend in multi-card configuration), I'm curious how high the temperature of the top card climbs, and how hot your mobo gets.
 
Don't go custom cooled for dual gpu solutions unless you have a couple of slots in between both cards. If they are put together with slot or less distance, you are fucked (especially with ATi cards).
 
Finguz said:
Mining with the core @100% for the last 40+ hours and temp = 75 celcius = there are no issues with the coolers on the retail cards.

Gigabyte have already stated that the issue with the coolers was restricted to 30 review samples, but of course if you don't want to accept that......

It would be great if you could stop presenting your opinion as fact, especially when the actual facts bear no resemblance to your opinion.
Click to expand...

There is nothing to accept. I have disassembled my card. WF cooler is not direct touch heatpipe cooler, no matter what. On top of that one of my fans has rattling issue. The issue was AFAIK that he cooler base was thicker than it was supposed to be.
 
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KickAssCop said:
Don't go custom cooled for dual gpu solutions unless you have a couple of slots in between both cards. If they are put together with slot or less distance, you are fucked (especially with ATi cards).
Click to expand...

Fully agreed with this. Using non reference in crossfire or SLI can result in headaches unless the case in question is exceptional - reference will dump heat outside the case, while CF or SLI has the potential to dump 600-750+ watts of heat inside the case resulting in your cards drowning in heat. Usually that will cause the upper card will get too hot in such a configuration; and getting too hot will lead to BSODs, TDRs, and all that sort of fun stuff. I had to deal with this very issue with 680 aftermarket cards in SLI which I was able to get working (after much hair pulling), and that was with the efficient GK104 GPUs....I can't see 290 open air cards being easily workable unless you have an absolutely huge case, leave the side panel off, and point tons of fans at them. It'll be a lot of hassle, whereas reference you can just set it and forget it for the most part.

You can make it work but it requires an EXCEPTIONAL case, a good motherboard (with good pcie spacing) and a lot of case fans. Reference is just better for SLI or CF. Then you just run into the problem of the 290 reference designs being severely lacking, but some people apparently don't have an issue with that. Regardless of that, reference is going to be better and less hassle for crossfire, generally speaking. Open air cards are just tough to get working in SLI/CF configs at times.

TL'DR: reference blower designs are better than custom coolers for SLI or Crossfire
 
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I'm more confused now...lol. I'll definitely have a gap between the cards as I will be placing them quite a bit apart. But I need something to keep up with my oc'ed 3930k...so I'll probably grab a couple of windforces if I can find them for a good price. I'd love to nab XFX just for the amazing support I've had with them in the past....But something is just unsettling for me. I just don't see their cooler being nearly as good as the directcu or windforce series. Case wise though, I'm using a NZXT Phantom 820, Large case with plenty of room, along with a Kraken x60 water cooling setup for the cpu. Should be enough hopefully, although this will likely increase my temps as all that hot air will be running through my rad on top =*(.

Even though I've been a huge asus fan in terms of quality, I've heard horror stories about their support...Which makes me worry regarding RMA. =*(

I'll admit though, what annoys me the most are most of the manufacturers I've been looking at are using eplida ram. I nabbed a reference sapphire r9 290 hoping I'd get hynix for my cousin...Got elpida, and the damn thing would blackscreen or cause the system to bsod. Scares me that the windforce, asus, and others I've been looking at all chose elpida =*(.
 
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IMO, you're making a mistake by getting custom cards for crossfire. Generally in my experience, when you do this, you'll either get crashes, TDRs, or BSODs unless you leave the side of the case off AND point fans at both cards, and you'll negate any potential overclocking or limit it severely. There's also a good chance that you'll need to use high manual fan speeds. Basically what happens is, the bottom card dumps a ton of hot air into the case and it will rise and "cook" the upper card. You can find workarounds for this but the top card will still have higher temps, and you will still negate any possible overclocks most of the time... And when you think about it, the entire point of custom cards is overclocking and quietness, so if that benefit is negated...well....I dunno. Getting custom cards in CF or SLI for 250W+ TDP cards sandwiched requires going above and beyond, even if your case is excellent.

The reference blowers are louder, but they really are going to better for crossfire if you really want 290s. The only way i'd use 290s in CF with custom cards is if your specific motherboard allows crossfire with 2 empty slots in between. That's actually a possibility if you're on x79, but it will relegate your slots to double x8 speeds. That isn't a big deal, the performance difference is negligible. What you DO NOT want to do is sandwich these cards on top of each other, if you do that you're going to have a ton of headaches.

Just my experience FWIW. I'd say buy from a place with a good return policy just in case.
 
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