Very nice, but as I feared needs quite alot of energy. 65nm is a safe bet, they can do an optical shrink to 55nm, when they are ready.

It's interesting though, this is really similar to the 7900 Series vs X1900 Series, ATI was a bit faster but at the cost of larger die size, Nvidia was slower but had greater yields due to lower die size. This time, ATI is slower, but not just by a bit, but they have a smaller die size advantage, and they keep the feature set advantage. Nvidia has way better performance on a single die, bur also more costly.

If ATI can do their Crossfire on a stick right, and charge a good price, they should be sitting in a good position. The extreme high end will belong to NV though with 3-Way SLI on GTX 280.