god all that effort and no significant difference in noise.

Silly silly silly.

Unless you're going for watercooling as a "minimum-noise" operation, the whole point of watercooling is to deal with the extra temperature that an air cooler cannot handle.

If sapphire haven't got the balls to up the voltage, then of course it's not going to clock any higher.

It's a waste of a cooler. I've seen (with my own eyes) X1900XT's running at 115% voltage at 800MHz core clock (watercooling of course) so it's not as if the chips can't hack the extra voltage.

Good review though. TR's always there for the down-to-earth points that other sites just keep failing to mention.

So, the Theatre chip makes it VIVO capable, but no TV tuner, right? Rats.

Sapphire throws a full array of extras into the box, including standard and high-definition output dongles, composite and S-Video cables, and a pair of DVD-to-VGA adapters. A PCI Express power adapter is also included for those with older power supplies.

Am I being retarded or do you mean DVI?
-Mole

Are the hoses removable and compatible with a real water-cooling setup?

I would like to see it benchmarked vs. this......
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32816

Would one of these fit in a G5 shuttle, with the graphics card on the outside and cooling unit on the inside?

Can someone say "Marketing Gimmick"?

This card will appeal to self-styled yet clueless "hardcore" gamers who buy anything that's expensive and sounds cool - you know, the people who bought the Pentium 4 Extreme(ly Hot) Edition and low-end video cards with 256mb of RAM.

Obviously, these people don't read TR, but they'll be able to brag to their (equally clueless) friends about their amazing new water-cooled video card.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here... Why when they go through this much effort to push the GPU do they just let the memory go with tiny ramsinks (given they didn't push the card much but the cooling solution is definitely a push)?

Seriously you don't need to overclock standard memory hardcore. They could simply add memory that runs at faster stock speeds. Unless they don't make faster memory...

"A generous length of hose..."

This is why I donate to TR.

All of that effort and it's still louder than the green competition

It's available at newegg right now for $550, or $500 open box (one of which could have been mine).

I had some problems with the cooler in my system. I originally planned to have it in one of my PCIe x8 slots, but it wouldn't fit (tab too long). Putting it in a x16 was ok, but because PCIe slots are recessed more than PCI it wasn't very secure (tab was barely in the slot).

It wouldn't fit in my available PCI slots either. I had one directly below the card itself but because of the thickness of the cooler and the water block, it wouldn't fit without bending. Of my remaining two which are next to each other, one of which has an x-fi, it interefered with the x-fi's capacitors. If I switched them, then the fan would have very little clearance for air sitting on top of the x-fi. Also take note that the cooler is 8.5 inches long, so be weary of any usb/sata/firewire plugs you have sticking out of your mobo.

Anyways, another fun review. I enjoyed reading about the sensuous sticker removal :)

Great article, as always.

I really liek the idea of a self-contained watercooling subsystem on specific parts of a system. It costs a bundle now, but I would like to see more products like this in the future.