Cool, thanks for the video review link Sickamore - however, the fans aren't any less noisy I noticed in the video when the MSI card got hot. I'm more looking for quiet than massive cooling performance. However, I'm quite happy with the performance of my 480 coming from an 8800GTX
As far as SLI and Crossfire. I would never recommend that to anyone. A single card is always better. You're paying for 2 cards, when you're not guaranteed to see anything better than a 50% increase in frame rate. Talk about a horrible cost and power to performance ratio! You're using only half or less of the 2nd card.
I've tried SLI before with two of my 8800's, and it was crap. I've also tested out a Crossfire setup, and it's not any better than SLI - in fact, it's not even as good as SLI. Game incompatibility, and some games just don't have that much of a performance increase. The number of games that do, are slim. Not to mention, two of any brand card is going to have even more noise and more heat unless those new ATI cards are just THAT much quieter and cooler which I doubt having owned ATI cards in the past.
Shmee, how high do you think I could clock up the Q9550? =) I've not seen any data on those for overclockability. If I could do at least 3.5-3.6ghz on air with one of those I'd grab one tomorrow haha
Edit: when do you think those 69xx's will be out? I didn't even think of that though, from my past ATI card experiences -> it's been a while since I've liked their products.