Winchip has made some waves with their DDR2 1200 MHz offering and they are one of the first ones out the door with (soon to be) retail DDR3 at 1600 MHz. While CL8-8-8-15 may not be so bad at this speed, other manufacturers have already announced CL7-7-7-18 based modules with 1600 MHz as well. We will see lower timings and faster memory as time goes by, just as it was with the launch of DDR2 and it should be interesting to see how Winchip fares with their DDR3 offerings in the future. Right now there is no real advantage in getting DDR3 instead of DDR2, especially if you want to use 2 GB or more memory, as it costs about twice as much as high performance DDR2.
Also the selection of mainboards out there that support highly overclocked DDR3 is very limited. There are only 10 such boards available in the EU at the moment. Once AMD goes DDR3 and the mainbards drop in price and there is a larger selection including the mainstream and budget market, things will get affordable. Winchip is pushing the memory right from the start with a great line-up. So it should be quite interesting what the future holds in store, but for now this memory is just for the select few, wanting to be on the bleeding edge of technology and are willing to pay the price for it.