Ok, so the card warranty's intact, but presumably ripping off the stock cooler and sticking the Atomic block on your CPU could well leave you in the lurch if anything goes wrong in that department.

Certainly every PIB I've ever bought came with a warning that the use of anything other than the provided cooler or one from the list of approved coolers on the manufacturer's website would invalidate the warranty. Of course, you can always claim you *were* using the stock cooler, but then you can always screw the vanilla one back onto your graphics card too*.

Even less attractive then.

*Smart hardware monkeys take reference photos when dismantling and keep a variety of thermals pastes, pads and glues in stock to add veracity to this process.

"we can't imagine anyone spending £590 on a graphics card."

No, but I can't imagine anybody paying 50 pence for the Daily Mail or more than a fiver for an iJesusphone, or anything at all for the pure evils of coffee, bananas or Bourbon biscuits, but apparently there's folks that do.

Strange world, isn't it.

"That rating’s 90 for performance, 90 for novelty and 30 for the huge cost."

Unless you weight cost more than the other two, I arrive at:

(90+90+30=210)/3=70%

But I'd happily give it 90+80+10 since water cooling isn't that novel, in which case 60% still works...

Sod that. What we really want to know is,

Does it have Open Source drivers?

yes but can it play GTA4 on max?

you thought I was gonna say crysis dintcha?

"Did you hear that whooshing noise? That was the sound of your warranty flying out through the window."

Didnt bother reading more after seeing this because the reviewers obviously a tool. EVGA give you a lifetime warranty on the card EVEN IF you tear off the stock heatsink and add a water block so long as you send the parts back in the same box if it blows up. Do your bloody research

Leaving aside the scoring, as it has been covered by another comment:

"we can't imagine anyone spending £590 on a graphics card. If we take a charitable view, you're paying £400 for the graphics card and £100 for the water-cooling hardware."

I can't imagine how £400 + £100 somehow equates anywhere near to £590. Do you somehow get a £90 discount for taking "a charitable view"?

As in 'Atomic' magazine - the Australian gaming computer mag - whose logo looks a lot like the one ATi seem to have, er, borrowed.

> Doing the same for your graphics card is a different proposition as you have to dismantle the

> original cooler before you attach the VGA water block and hook it into the cooling loop.

Eh, you lose warranty on the motherboard when you install water cooling on your PC too. That's because most water cooling solutions also come with a water cooling block that covers over the chipset. And if you're a gaming afficiando most likely you'd have a performance motherboard that has a chipset fan. And of course, most likely you're going to remove the chipset fan for the water block anyway.

Personally, tho, I went the way of convectional cooling. Sure, it requires my air conditioner to be at full blast and my rig's case to have half a dozen fans installed (and thus sound like a mini jet engine), but it beats the fear of the cooling system springing a leak and causing a shortout.

Not heard of nVidia Quardro cards then?