Quote Originally Posted by 003 View Post
The GeForce 8 totally destroyed them? The RV670 was quite literally a die shrink of the R600 with a slightly higher stock core clock speed and a smaller memory bus, with DX10.1 support later added in a driver update. Clock for clock, the 2900XT is actually slightly faster than the 3870 due to the 512-bit memory bus.

Yeah in price/performance maybe, although the GTX280 was still faster than the 4870 and consequently the GTX295 is faster than the 4870X2.

The 8800GTX (G80) competes with the 2900XT and utterly destroys it. Then ATI rolls out the 3870 which is not much faster than the 2900XT, but just much cheaper to produce and sell.

Nvidia responded with the G92 (9800GTX) which was just a tweaked version of the G80, which was also cheaper to produce and sell, and obviously still destroyed the 3870.

Then when ATI released the 4870, it was finally competitive with the 9800GTX and beat it slightly in most cases, to which nvidia responded with the 9800GTX+ which is almost as fast as the 4870, and in some cases, still a bit faster.

Then, nvidia really opened the can of whoop ass and unleashed the GTX280 which is undeniably faster than the 4870. ATI responds with the 4870X2 which was faster than the GTX280, and nvidia responded with the GTX295 which is faster still.

Now as far as single GPU cards are concerned, we have the GTX285 and 4890 which are very close in terms of performance and trade blows most of the time, with some noteworthy outliers on both sides of the fence.
Wow, you've got so many things wrong there. First of all 9800GTX+/GTS250 is as fast as a 4850 and thus a 4870 (1GB) is 20-30% faster - actually as fast as the GTX260 (216SP). The fact that Nvidia had to increase the SP-count from 192 to 216 to compete with the 4870 has gone unnoticed by you I assume.

Also, the GTX280 and GTX260 were released prior to the 4870 launch. Nvidia had to drop the prices with 150-200$ a month later and gave cash backs to early adopters. The 9800GTX+ was released after the 4850 to give it competition since the 9800GTX was loosing...

So the alleged can of whop ass from Nvidia was never there. AMD/ATI opened some cans, first 4850/199$ beating 9800GTX/(don't know exact price but 8800GT seemed to be around 200$ at that time) and 4870(512MB)/299$ trading blows with GTX260(192SP)/450$ and then 4870X2 which took the performance crown. GTX275 was also a response to what AMD/ATI did - the 4890.