Quote Originally Posted by flopper View Post
driver kinks and early drivers.

a couple of driver revisions, and there be more stable crossover data.
Amen. I'm saving judgment at least until official reviews, maybe even Cat 9.10 or 9.11. Interesting to note is that all comparisons are usually done with 8xAA, and that performance differences are not so exaggerated at lower AA levels. If I remember correctly, nVIDIA GPUs show very poor performance at AA levels higher than 4xMSAA/4xSSAA (hence their CSAA derivatives). If someone knows more about this, please extend/correct my statement. I do notice it on my GTX295 though. I'd like to see some comparisons with no AA as well.

Either way, I still think AMD has done well with the 5870. They packed some incredible performance in a small package (only 190W TDP!, 28W idle!) as well as some revolutionary features. I don't think you can expect a guaranteed 100% performance boost per generation anymore. The 8800 series jump was an exception, not the rule. Having dedicated vertex and pixel shader units was a gross inefficiency in GPU design, so it was no surprise how much performance was gained when that inefficiency was surmounted with nVIDIA's 8800 series. However, the more "perfected" GPU designs become as companies learn from their (and each other's) mistakes each generation, it becomes harder and harder to innovate over great designs. Sometimes there's still great room for improvement (3870 -> 4870 in my book), sometimes there isn't.