I work for an electronics company and I can categorically say that all manufacturers design a 'cost down' version of a product when the first version has been successfully released.
As the name implies, the cost down version will have the same functionality but the cheapest components possible to maximise the profit margin.
Therefore it is best to avoid any rev2 versions of the 5850 if you can.
Yup, in general thats the idea, and why not, its normally to help cover costs as costs reduce, if people stopped paying over the odds in the UK and let them stay on the shelves until they dropped, we'd be paying £180-190 by now for 5850's, and cheaper production helps Sapphire et all maintain the same profit level.
AS we've all seen a certain site sell at cost to a few lucky forum members, that was at £250, you can all tell EXACTLY how much mark up retailers can add and what you should be paying.
Thing is, for instance, MSI's lightning version is most certainly a more expensive version.
I'd still suggest a reference version, for 3rd party cooling should you want it.
I'd also say it hasn't been hard to tell for 6 months now that a 5850 was a damn good choice, its not like people haven't had time to get one now
Something like the prolimatech cooler would most likely fit on non reference designs though, you might have to buy some vrm specific cooler, or small sinks to stick on. Theres really no need to water cool them, the prolimatech has my card running at 36C load, in a warm room, not heating up my CPU any more than usual and running silently.
To say the stock cooling sucks balls, would be to understate how bad it is.
Asus's new one is probably the pick of the bunch, a decent sized cooler(depth of fins UNDER the fan is how to get good cooling, vapourX isn't that good to be honest) and a proper fan to finish it off.
Supports voltage increases so probably overclocks well with decent stock cooling to boot. Decent enough sink you could probably whip the fan/shroud off and stick a £5 zalman on with zipties for silent and great cooling.
