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SLI GTX 770's; What is the best card?

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  • Gtx
  • SLI
  • Graphics
Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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June 3, 2013 8:41:33 PM

Hello all!
Well, I've said pretty much all I need to say...
I am planning on dual-SLI'ing (on a soon-to-be 5760x1080 setup) GTX 770's, and I am trying to decide what card to buy. I know that there are many choices (Asus DirectCU II, MSI Lightning, EVGA with/without ACX, Gigabyte Windforce, etc.).
To sum it up, what I really want to know is, for dual-SLI, what is the best GTX 770?
Thanks in advance! :) 

More about : sli gtx 770 card

June 3, 2013 8:49:04 PM

Well any of them are great. If you want to get really specific, i'd say get the one that corresponds to your motherboard. Most of these cards your pointing out are not to the spec of the reference gtx 770 card. This means that they all have special functions based on the corresponding motherboard. More accurate temperature read outs, special BIOS functions, power saving features linked to the motherboard, etc. Lets say you own an ASUS motherboard, then get the DirectCU II card. If you own an MSI board, get the MSI Lightning, and so forth. If you want a general card though, go for the EVGA. They tend to be the best quality video cards for Nvidia, and the ACX models are just the best all around with the GTX 7xx generation so far.
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June 3, 2013 8:51:16 PM

hi , for sli i recommend u go for the Asus DirectCU II because of the well known cooling potential it has ...
the main problem faced by the people having their video cards in sli is that they usually do overheat and they cannot take the risk of overclocking it !!! DirectCU II will help u out of this situation as these cards are manufactured with the primary objective of reducing temps :) 
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June 3, 2013 9:00:29 PM

Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.
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June 3, 2013 9:02:00 PM

mafisometal said:
Well any of them are great. If you want to get really specific, i'd say get the one that corresponds to your motherboard. Most of these cards your pointing out are not to the spec of the reference gtx 770 card. This means that they all have special functions based on the corresponding motherboard. More accurate temperature read outs, special BIOS functions, power saving features linked to the motherboard, etc. Lets say you own an ASUS motherboard, then get the DirectCU II card. If you own an MSI board, get the MSI Lightning, and so forth. If you want a general card though, go for the EVGA. They tend to be the best quality video cards for Nvidia, and the ACX models are just the best all around with the GTX 7xx generation so far.


Thank you so much!! I have an Asus motherboard, so I will probably be going with the DirectCU II. Thank you again! :) 
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June 3, 2013 9:02:10 PM

thismafiaguy said:
Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.


Thank you so much!! I have an Asus motherboard, so I will probably be going with the DirectCU II. Thank you again! :) 
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June 3, 2013 9:03:20 PM

thismafiaguy said:
Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.


But will the spacing affect their performance (in terms of the electrical slots and other things of that nature)?
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June 3, 2013 9:03:49 PM

bobleeswagger666 said:
hi , for sli i recommend u go for the Asus DirectCU II because of the well known cooling potential it has ...
the main problem faced by the people having their video cards in sli is that they usually do overheat and they cannot take the risk of overclocking it !!! DirectCU II will help u out of this situation as these cards are manufactured with the primary objective of reducing temps :) 


Thank you so much!! I have an Asus motherboard, so I will probably be going with the DirectCU II. Thank you again! :) 
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June 3, 2013 9:06:58 PM

bobleeswagger666 said:
hi , for sli i recommend u go for the Asus DirectCU II because of the well known cooling potential it has ...
the main problem faced by the people having their video cards in sli is that they usually do overheat and they cannot take the risk of overclocking it !!! DirectCU II will help u out of this situation as these cards are manufactured with the primary objective of reducing temps :) 


That might've been true for 600 series cards, however Gigabyte's new Windforce rated at 450W heat dissipation is a whole another beast. It was designed to be able to cool a Titan, so cooling a GTX 770 is obviously a cake walk. Techpowerup rated it at lower Load temps, lower noise output and attained a higher overclock on it than they did on Asus' DCUII GTX 770 model.

If you want the best of the best though, go for MSI Lightning. All Lightning edition GPUs go through a binning process, which means that they comprise of 10% of the highest performing chips available + they're designed to be pushed to their absolute limits and GPU boost 2.0 will play a huge part in it. The cooler might not be as silent as Gigabyte's Windforce, but this card is simply the best by design.
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June 3, 2013 9:17:20 PM

dannyboy2233 said:
thismafiaguy said:
Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.


But will the spacing affect their performance (in terms of the electrical slots and other things of that nature)?


Performance should not be affected as long as both slots are x16 bandwidth. But if you intend to overclock, heat is going to be a bigger issue.
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June 3, 2013 9:32:55 PM

As far as heat goes, you may have better luck with two cards with the 'Titan' coolers. They are not better than the aftermarket solutions, but given the relatively low TDP of the 770 they are overkill, and in an SLI setup may benefit from the fact that they exhaust out of the case, so the bottom card wont be polluting the top card so much.
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June 3, 2013 9:40:22 PM

cookybiscuit said:
As far as heat goes, you may have better luck with two cards with the 'Titan' coolers. They are not better than the aftermarket solutions, but given the relatively low TDP of the 770 they are overkill, and in an SLI setup may benefit from the fact that they exhaust out of the case, so the bottom card wont be polluting the top card so much.


Well you can't really help the fact that heat from the bottom card will affect the top card regardless of what cooler you've got. The top card will always be hotter than the bottom card, so it's important that the top card isn't being suffocated. The blower style coolers will be "choking" if they are installed with no space in between, because they only have one or two possible intakes.
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June 4, 2013 10:14:48 AM

thismafiaguy said:
cookybiscuit said:
As far as heat goes, you may have better luck with two cards with the 'Titan' coolers. They are not better than the aftermarket solutions, but given the relatively low TDP of the 770 they are overkill, and in an SLI setup may benefit from the fact that they exhaust out of the case, so the bottom card wont be polluting the top card so much.


Well you can't really help the fact that heat from the bottom card will affect the top card regardless of what cooler you've got. The top card will always be hotter than the bottom card, so it's important that the top card isn't being suffocated. The blower style coolers will be "choking" if they are installed with no space in between, because they only have one or two possible intakes.


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June 4, 2013 10:15:06 AM

thismafiaguy said:
dannyboy2233 said:
thismafiaguy said:
Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.


But will the spacing affect their performance (in terms of the electrical slots and other things of that nature)?


Performance should not be affected as long as both slots are x16 bandwidth. But if you intend to overclock, heat is going to be a bigger issue.


Well see I know that if I don't use the top two slots then my performance is inhibited, because the bottom slot is the least powerful... So I'm going to probably need the 770 with the best cooling... is it the Windforce, the reference, the DirectCU II, or something else?
Thanks :) 
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June 18, 2013 9:42:37 PM

Hi there. I'm having heat issues with the aftermarket coolers (Palit Jetsream and Gigabyte windforce 770gtx's). This is a common problem which was also present when i installed two 580gtx twin frozrII cards hitting over 90C in the top gpu. Go for the stock cooling solution when using SLI to avoid getting heat issues from having a heat buildup from the bottom card. I'm just banging my head right now on how to solve this 770gtx sli issue once again... (stupid me for trying again).
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June 30, 2013 5:06:32 PM

dannyboy2233 said:
thismafiaguy said:
dannyboy2233 said:
thismafiaguy said:
Probably EVGA or ASUS DirectCU, those are reliable cards that I know from experience. Your main concern is going to be the top card overheating under load.

Note the space between your PCI-E slots on the motherboard. If the cards will have at least one empty slot between them in SLI, cooling won't be too much of an issue as long as your case is adequately ventilated. However, if the cards are going to be directly stacked one on top of the other, make sure to avoid the reference blower style design and go for one with a heatsink that dissipates heat outwards instead of just pulling it through the card. That way you can at least set up a side panel fan to push air into the side of the card, so the top card isn't suffocating.


But will the spacing affect their performance (in terms of the electrical slots and other things of that nature)?


Performance should not be affected as long as both slots are x16 bandwidth. But if you intend to overclock, heat is going to be a bigger issue.


Well see I know that if I don't use the top two slots then my performance is inhibited, because the bottom slot is the least powerful... So I'm going to probably need the 770 with the best cooling... is it the Windforce, the reference, the DirectCU II, or something else?
Thanks :) 


Just about anything non-reference will be better off in terms of cooling. I would recommend an EVGA GTX770 with the ACX cooler, which is also available in a superclocked variant for ~$10 more, it's beast.

eddieveenstra said:
Hi there. I'm having heat issues with the aftermarket coolers (Palit Jetsream and Gigabyte windforce 770gtx's). This is a common problem which was also present when i installed two 580gtx twin frozrII cards hitting over 90C in the top gpu. Go for the stock cooling solution when using SLI to avoid getting heat issues from having a heat buildup from the bottom card. I'm just banging my head right now on how to solve this 770gtx sli issue once again... (stupid me for trying again).


Try switching to a motherboard with adequate spacing between the PCI-E slots. Even the best coolers will need room to breathe. And also, using a side panel fan or placing a fan at the front of the case to push air onto the cards could help tremendously. It mainly depends on room temperature and the overclock temperature of the card.

On a side note, GTX580s were some of the hottest cards ever made, it isn't uncommon to have overheating issues with them.
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July 14, 2013 9:35:31 PM

dannyboy2233 said:
Hello all!
Well, I've said pretty much all I need to say...
I am planning on dual-SLI'ing (on a soon-to-be 5760x1080 setup) GTX 770's, and I am trying to decide what card to buy. I know that there are many choices (Asus DirectCU II, MSI Lightning, EVGA with/without ACX, Gigabyte Windforce, etc.).
To sum it up, what I really want to know is, for dual-SLI, what is the best GTX 770?
Thanks in advance! :) 



Whatever you get , be sure it is the 4GB version and not the 2GB one .
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July 14, 2013 10:08:52 PM

sna said:
dannyboy2233 said:
Hello all!
Well, I've said pretty much all I need to say...
I am planning on dual-SLI'ing (on a soon-to-be 5760x1080 setup) GTX 770's, and I am trying to decide what card to buy. I know that there are many choices (Asus DirectCU II, MSI Lightning, EVGA with/without ACX, Gigabyte Windforce, etc.).
To sum it up, what I really want to know is, for dual-SLI, what is the best GTX 770?
Thanks in advance! :) 



Whatever you get , be sure it is the 4GB version and not the 2GB one .


I have actually decided to go for single GTX 690; on ebay, they go for about $700-$750, meaning that I save $150-$200 from dual 770s.
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July 15, 2013 3:07:04 PM

dannyboy2233 said:
sna said:
dannyboy2233 said:
Hello all!
Well, I've said pretty much all I need to say...
I am planning on dual-SLI'ing (on a soon-to-be 5760x1080 setup) GTX 770's, and I am trying to decide what card to buy. I know that there are many choices (Asus DirectCU II, MSI Lightning, EVGA with/without ACX, Gigabyte Windforce, etc.).
To sum it up, what I really want to know is, for dual-SLI, what is the best GTX 770?
Thanks in advance! :) 



Whatever you get , be sure it is the 4GB version and not the 2GB one .


I have actually decided to go for single GTX 690; on ebay, they go for about $700-$750, meaning that I save $150-$200 from dual 770s.


That's great! The GTX 690 will be a showpiece at any LAN party, and at $700 they'll be the best bang for the buck. And since it's physically just one card, you won't have to worry about spacing issues.
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February 11, 2014 7:09:17 PM

thismafiaguy said:
dannyboy2233 said:
sna said:
dannyboy2233 said:
Hello all!
Well, I've said pretty much all I need to say...
I am planning on dual-SLI'ing (on a soon-to-be 5760x1080 setup) GTX 770's, and I am trying to decide what card to buy. I know that there are many choices (Asus DirectCU II, MSI Lightning, EVGA with/without ACX, Gigabyte Windforce, etc.).
To sum it up, what I really want to know is, for dual-SLI, what is the best GTX 770?
Thanks in advance! :) 



Whatever you get , be sure it is the 4GB version and not the 2GB one .


I have actually decided to go for single GTX 690; on ebay, they go for about $700-$750, meaning that I save $150-$200 from dual 770s.


That's great! The GTX 690 will be a showpiece at any LAN party, and at $700 they'll be the best bang for the buck. And since it's physically just one card, you won't have to worry about spacing issues.


I pray to the old gods and the new you were being a snarky ass, or I'll probably have to go end my existence...
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