Best 5770 model - ASUS vs XFX

The Asus between these two. Looking at the pictures of accessories your getting the crossfire bridge and a dvi-hdmi adapter-two handy things. Plus a Dark knight DvD.
But as far as the cards, this is cu core VS reference. IMO it might have slightly better electrical components, and of course it has that 5 ounce HS. One of the more sought after bios's stock.  

???

Asus has superior cooling and most Asus 5xxx boards have voltage tweaking capabilities.

I've been reading from the reviews that the Asus CuCore has some issues with its aftermarket HSF...namely hotter and nosier than stock HSF.

Any personal experiences?

??? http://event.asus.com/vga/2010/eah5000series/ ???

Well, the XFX is a reference design, which is great, and has a double lifetime warranty. The Asus however, has a nice copper cooler that seems to be a good design, and ALSO comes with a free copy of the Dark Knight. For the same price I'd go for the Asus with the free movie and non-reference cooler:-)

BTW- I loved my Asus EAH4870 DK TOP- great card.

I personally would go with HIS, my twin 5770's from HIS have been ultra strong. XFX has a good warranty but I've always had to use the warranty with them. No experience with Asus video cards at all.

Don't forget Sapphire, they're specialized in ATI cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Aye, but so far for the price, the two at $160 seems to be best. The sapphire that costs 150-155ish has that half cooler thingymajiggy....

There is the HIS version for $150, but it also has the egg-type cooler:-) Or you could even go for a crappy Powercolor for $140 :-p
Anyway- I'd just grab that Asus.
Edit- with the 5770 prices going up a bit, there might actually be room to recommend a 5750 again for $140. Wish they would just both go down though- 5770 at $150 and 5750 should be around $120

i got the sapphire vapor-x card and OC'd it by 40mhz on the GPU/RAM and the hottest it gets in games is only 60c. also it's silent. the only con is that sapphire made virtually every vapor-x card with the 5750 shaders, so a bios flash on the GPU is necessary (albeit easy). i only paid $165 for mine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

wait- are you saying they made the 5770 VaporX with the 5750 shader count?

The initial batch of cards were accidently released with the 5750 Bios burned onto them instead of the 5770's --- It has since been corrected and the effected cards could be fixed with a bios flash but yes it did happen !!

As for between the 2 you listed the cucore card only has a single DVI connector and a single Xfire connector on the PCB board so if you plan on using triple xfire keep that in mind and\or if you want to use 2 displays through the DVI connections you'll need that adapter they include where the XFX has 2 DVI and 2 Xfire connections.

Personally I have the Sapphire egg shaped cooler and it runs very cool and fairly quiet so if you have decent airflow in your case those type work well also !!

yeah. it really wasn't a big deal at all. i've never flashed a bios and it took me all of 10 minutes. also if you *** it up, they don't void the warranty.

the card is great and supposedly runs much cooler than other cards with much less noise as well. i did a relatively mild OC and it seems to run exactly the same as far as heat/noise level goes.

Huh- I never heard about that. Funny:-P There was a nice OOPS on the part of Sapphire.

Yes there was !! --Does bring up a thought though - I wonder if you could take a regular 5750 and flash it to a 5770 and have it work on some cards ( if they were just disabled like the cores on some AMD dual and triple core CPU's) or are they actually different Chips.

i wondered the same thing actually. then you could possibly OC the 5750 to the power of a 5770. but, the 5770 really isn't that much more expensive than the 5750, and when you OC it, you get a lot more out of it for the extra $30 you spend.

very true Tuffluck- unless you already HAVE 5750s, like me:-) Then it might be a nice performance upgrade if it would work. Not sure I really want to try it though as I've got everything working pretty darn well right now:-P.