ATI’s Dual-Chip Hemlock Due Late in Q4'09+ Possible Prices

[Chickenfeed]

It's because the up-sell is so easy for people to make.... for only a $150 bucks more you have more value. So ATI gets more profit from people who wouldn't normally buy SLI, but see this as an opportunity to get into a multi-GPU solution...

^ This.

I paid $600cnd for my X2 at the tail end of August last year and at the time here there were only 4870 512s and they were 290-320cnd still. So given you have 2x the vmem, that is more value than 2 4870s ( and less slots used and slightly less load and a fair bit less idle power usage ) The biggest thing I take issue with X2 cards is the noise but there are ways around that I suppose.

I still expect both the 5870 and 5870x2 to use the same amount of GDDR5 however ( unlike the 4870 and X2 ) I'd be shocked if they had 2x2GB on the X2 although It could be possible.

$549USD MSRP would put the new X2 at the same price at last gen so I'd consider that realistic market wise. Unless Nvidia does in fact manage to both release GT300 in November and "wow" us with it, I doubt the 5800s will drop in price much if at all.