Will better 5850's be released?

Eventually. Sapphire has their Vapor-X cooling, ASUS has some good stuff (Dark-Knight quad-piped design on the 4870!), PowerColor usually does some custom cooling, HIS might get an ICEQ design, etc.

Scratch that.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=20620

Well, for now... the 5850s with the reference cooler are in short supply. I have one though  

Is it likely those designs would be released in november or december?

I would imagine new non-reference designs will start to pop up sometime mid-november or so. Don't hold me to that, but it usually takes about 1-2 months to really get creative new designs out there and the reference designs to kinda fade away.

So I couldn't wait and bought the reference HIS HD-5870 but would like to add cross-fire effentually. If a new design comes out, unless it's a water block it will still be compatible with my card for X-Fire right?

ohhh man the diamond just became available in Canada I don't even know if I wanna wait anymore  

guys, more input please.

How much better will the non reference cards be? are they usually more expensive or the same price as the reference cards?

I just started researching pc hardware for a couple of weeks now I have been completely out of the loop on the past couple of generations so I don't know how it's been in the past.

The 5850 reference card seems to perform very well in terms of temps/noise. I don't see a non reference design being a whole lot better. The 5870 is the card that could really use some aftermarket and non reference loving.