Quote Originally Posted by tijgert View Post
Poorly engineered? Care to elaborate?
That is a horrible card man. So many issues. The temperature sensors, BSODs, VRMs have no cooling, run at extreme temperatures, the cards throttle, run hot, crash, and don't overclock for anything. dCUII is a lame product, and a lame PCB, you cant mount pots on the PCB (unlike ASUS's matrix boards). The only glaring positive is the large array of power phases, but with so many problems, and seeing the reference boards clock higher, it cancels any benefits. Just search around some popular forums for some experiences with that board. It is the worst board I've seen so far, by far. And IMO it's due to bad design, quality control, and effort. It has some great characterisitics that could make it a real power-house card, but it just doesnt deliver QC. The 7970 reference design is much better. The MSI R7970 lighting is a great board, but I havent seen too many positive reviews on that fan and the quality and effectiveness of the HSF's mounting. It's mostly that it ran hot or fan made too much noise to not cool it to the expectations. At least the lightning is a proven PCB that can do high clocks on cold, the dcuII is nowhere NEAR the MATRIX or Lightning. DCUII 7900 cards = poor as the poster above you said. Matrix/Lighting = great board, meh fans. At least cooler & quieter than ref blower, but so is a shotgun so...