Normally we would get our reference ATI product in time for the launch, but I think with holidays and the fact that we already had a retail version ready for the NDA lift, along with the fact that the model probably doesn't draw the same attention as some of the higher end ones, it came a little later than normal.

While reference cards tend to be a bit boring in many ways, it's good to look at them all the same; they set a base point of which each variant of the card can be compared against. It's good to know how much better companies coolers are when compared to a reference one along with performance numbers when comparing to an overclocked version.