Well, sparked a real debate now
Apologies to BigBruiserAl, I see so many posters with large post counts that use it as a status symbol rather than anything useful, again my sincere apologies! Link used and posted in.
@Ejizz: Thanks for the explanation!
The reason I'm drawn to the EVGA is the OC of 850Mhz out of the box, no need to run Afterburner or any other tweaking tool. However, I do realise that other cards can be OC'd past 800MHz and the mem can be pushed too, but there is no guarantee that they will. The availability of these cards is also questionable as has been mentioned, widely available in the US from Newegg and other online stores but nothing in Europe yet, wondering if KFA2 have warned them off? Was tempted on a KFA2 but the terrible fan noise put me off when reading the Guru3D review.
I've seen the HAWK in action, a friend bought one the other day and I fitted it for him, uses one of his replaced GTX260's as a dedicated PhysX processor, now he's ordered a 2nd HAWK so that speaks for itself!! We tried a few games like Borderlands, Bad Company 2, F1 2010 and only Metro 2033 was unplayable at 1920 x 1200. The card was quiet as well when running the Heaven benchmark with DX11 enabled, I'd rather listen to the sound from my speakers rather than noisy fans!
I'll bypass the EVGA cards then seeing as the general consensus is 'overhyped' and concentrate on what is actually availble to buy today in the UK, just trying to decide which brand.