Thanks. I can definitely wait a little longer. I am just worried the price will rise (for some reason this card is the exact same price in Canada as the States, something that never happens).
I really want to try out NVidia since I had such a bad experience with my XFX 5970. I guess I shouldn't even worry about the 290x, eh?
NVidia cards seem relatively safe from all the mining, which is good!
Most of the aftermarket 780ti cards will be very close to equaling each other, with a few exceptions which will cost a bit more - such as the lightning, classified, HOF, etc. Those cards will be more aggressively binned (AFAIK), aside from those - you can pretty much buy any aftermarket 780ti and they will all be very good. Personally i'd be okay with any of the following: Asus DC II, Gigabyte Windforce III GHz edition, or maybe the MSI gamer edition. The EVGA SC ACX is also a consideration although that is using a reference PCB and will OC slightly worse.....The asus, Gigabyte and MSI will overclock in similar territory and will all be quiet at 100% GPU load.
The classified and lightning will cost a bit more and will have a bit more in terms of voltage options, but you'll pay for the privilege as mentioned. Those cards will cost more than the asus, wf3, EVGA SC ACX or msi gamer.
Personally if you're looking for a 780ti, you can't get much better than the WF3. You can wait for more options but unless you want over-voltage, it's not really worth waiting. I think the WF3 revision 2 cooler is pretty impressive, it is very quiet at 100% load.