Thoughts
I've neglected to touch on cost until the conclusion. It's a giant £600 including VAT at Komplett just now, a good £200 over other retail pricing for 6800 Ultra products. While you get the engineering expertise of a well designed water block for that money, along with everything else needed for a near-silent, closed-loop water-cooling system, there's no doubting that £600 is head and shoulders above any other consumer graphics card on the market.So the question is simple. Is the extra performance obtained, and the reduction in noise, worth £200 and the integration of a water-cooling setup into your personal computer system? Personally, the answer is no. With other Ultra partner boards hitting roughly the same clocks as an ExperTool driven Ultra/2600 CoolFX out of the box, and their own probable overclocking headroom, I'd suffer the increased noise of an air-cooled board and put the £200 towards a better monitor or something else to enhance your games playing experience.
Gainward will argue that the question of value for money is one that HEXUS shouldn't make on such a premium product, the Ferrari of graphics cards if you will, but to ignore it would be folly.
There's a definite performance increase to be had from the Ultra/2600 CoolFX at 470/1200, but unless the price differential drops to within £100 of the air-cooled board, the Ultra/2600 CoolFX is hard to recommend. Undoubtedly the fastest unmodified consumer graphics card in the world in quite a few scenarios, but not far enough away from boards like the X800 PRO, XT PE and other closely clocked 6800-based cards to be attractive, given the price.
Excellent engineering and large marketing cojones from Gainward, but it remains out of reach for so many gamers.
Score
Pros
Overall, at 470/1200, possibly the fastest graphics card in the worldExcellent water-block
Easy installation
Very quiet
Cons
Poor software bundle, no gamesExpensive is not the word
Performance delta to air cooled cards around 450MHz core not big enough to be compelling
No video input
