lets analyze what you said
Because you simply did not present yourself as a bright individual on your first post. Oh yea, what IS the difference after OCing? a resourceful person would read some reviews to find out, learn to google, heck, even check out the reviews on this site!
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_580_Lightning/26.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_580_Matrix/30.html
needless for me to say more?
I'm just laying down the facts: ASUS Matrix 580 has a 3x slot cooler, 3x slot cooler is simply stupid. cost MORE than the MSI Lightning 580. and MSI Lightning 580 actually have better OC potential than the ASUS Matrix, both cards output about the same noise level. and whats more? MSI it does it all with 2-slot coolers. They didn't win the best graphic cards of the year award for no reason! if ASUS wants to show everyone how great their 3x slot cooler is, then please stomp all over the 2-slot design (unfortunately, that didn't happen). simply put, ASUS card cost more, more slots, and OC worse than MSI! IMO the MSI cooler looks better too.
basically your first point is moot, then you turn yourself into a bigger joke by comparing "your supposedly" $700 EVGA watercooled 580 to my $500 lightning (which by the way, is far off the point of this discussion - which is comparing similarly priced air-cooled 580s, if you wanna compare your imaginary e-penis, please do so in another thread). So.. by your logic i can compare $2000 LN2 cards to oranges and still make myself creditable... Well, to be honest, I have no idea where this logic comes from, I'm just not even gonna try to understand this.
so there is really no reason for anyone to zealously defend them. that just borderline trolling and fanboyism.