Thoughts
Every time I use another example of the current high-end graphics card offerings, I come away more impressed at just how much performance is available. And then there's the range of rendering features that the 6-series offers. Not to mention the physical properties of the cards, such as dual-DVI ports and a fairly quiet reference cooler.You pay for the privilege (a wallet-raping £375 at the time of writing, from a popular U.K online retailer) but what a privilege it is. You get silky-smooth gaming at higher resolutions and IQ settings than the outgoing performance champions, maintaining or besting the old framerates. Just what the doctor ordered. If you're CPU limited with the Aeolus, just crank up the eye-candy and enjoy, while you save for a better CPU; you know it makes sense.
While the 6800 GT is no-doubt a better value buy, there's still a lot to be said for the full-speed 6800, especially given one or two games titles that are about to rear their awesome-looking heads.
If the best of the best is what you're looking for, the Aeolus's no-nonsense approach translated into a keen price, makes the performance, features, image quality and noise seem very very attractive.
AOpen deserve consideration for that near-£400, be sure and put them on any 6800 Ultra shopping list.
Excellent.
Score
Pros
Awesome performance and feature setGood no-frills presentation
Dual-DVI
Fairly quiet
Comparatively cheap (the cheapest 6800 Ultra out there it seems)
Cons
Lack of video input6800 GT performance is so strong for its money
