The reason behind this build. The GTX 970 was a great card for 1080p gaming. This card seems to be it's eqivalent for 1440p gaming. Ran everything I benchmarked very very well and I think he's going to like it a lot. Yeah the FE is paying a premium to get the card quicker but hey, he wanted his computer and I was able to find it on launch day. The blower style cooler works well in his case as well.
This thing is exactly what they said it would be. At my screen's resolution (2560x1080) it destroys everything without breaking a sweat. The blower fan in the reference design works excellently in my mini itx case and it keeps out all of the hot air from the GPU.
Brilliant card perfect for anything I throw at it in ultra. Obviously I could of gone for an aftermarket card like the asus or gigabyte but personally the Reference design has always stolen my heart very good looking and not bad performing at all.
My first experience with a blower style card and I cant say I'm pleased with it, I'd happily change out for a strix 1070 but for now this will have to do. But it does its job well just no so well on temps.