From my understanding of reviews, the biggest thing to take out from this gen of cards is the fact that tessellation is no longer an nvidia dominated zone. Like cilus said, this levels the playing field for now, even in games like crysis 2 which had to resort to invisible tessellation to show the 6xxx series weakness.
The other thing is that this card is running on what I would consider to be an alpha driver. the performance will definitely improve over six months with new catalyst releases.
Third, these cards respond much better to ocing than the 6xxx series. I expect that by the time kepler launches, we will have a 7980 with 1.2 ghz launch speed as amd seems to have the headroom for it.
These used to be amd's weak areas and looks like they have worked on all of them. That leaves nvidia fans grumbling because they have to wait for the green team to show up to the party.
Pricing is a bit of a sore spot but amd needs to make money so they are justified in charging what they want in a scenario where they can stay ahead of an oced 580 comfortably.
My expectations from die shrinks is more realistic. I don't expect new gen tech to trounce previous gen dual card tech
those days are long gone.
As a consumer I can't wait for kepler to launch as this will mean amd will reduce the prices which would be a win win scenario.
Some of the reviewers are not able to hide their bias. Techradar seems to be the worst. They find it difficult to pat amd for doing something right for once lol.
^^ Anil, I think it is the perfect time for you to upgrade to HD 7970 from your existing HD 4890 CF. You always wanted a single GPU solution and I think it is the best option now.
You know, it's kind of funny no one mentions the 4870x2 anymore. If you look at toms gpu hierarchy, that card is right up there with the 570, 6970, 6950 in dx 10 games.
I'll read the reviews now.
