yeah but research and uniqueness only go so far... this card = fail. Why? It's basically a $1300 GTX295OC.
They get an "A" for effort, but other than that, it just shows how good nvidia's engineers are, that ASUS tried SO hard to beat their reference and failed in the end. One review even stated that the card put up higher numbers but felt jerkier than the 295.
You are looking at it as a sales perspective, not a marketing perspective. I for one look at it as a good move to show that asus will go extra mile for their products, not just slapping a sticker and calling it theirs.
The card has performance as expected from a SLI of GTX285, and look at DriverHeaven review, they were able to play at resolutions where the 295 simply ran out of memory.
I´m not saying i would consider buying it, but remember there are only 1000, i sure bet that there are 1000 people willing to buy the card even if its just for show/price.
I just liked that they tried, maybe they will get better and we will se more exclusive asus cards