Quote Originally Posted by _G_ View Post
that may be true for ati's current offering but this block may be built around future thermal requirements later in the 29xx series.
Eventually, they'll be switching to GDDR4 (which should run even cooler, though nn could correct me if I'm wrong there) and, if they bump the onboard memory to 1GB (as Sapphire seems to have planned for the 2900XTX), then this block likely won't be compatible anyway. My point was that adding that whole extra assembly to water cool the memory on the back of the card is pretty ridiculous (and it certainly doesn't future-proof it in any way). You aren't likely to see a substantial performance difference between the two models of the block but there probably will be a substantial price difference.