The official GT300/Fermi Thread

[DilTech]

The 5870 is pretty much a 4870 doubled up with a little faster ram. As we all know, architectures do reach their ceilings.

I will remind you, however, that the 4870 had the same amount of rops as the 3870, but they improved how well they handle(ipc if you will). The 4870 wasn't double the 3870 in specifications. 4870 was easily 2x as fast as the 3870 when AA was enabled. The 9800GTX has less rops than the 8800GTX but for the most part was faster(even if only mildly), and also had less memory bandwidth. The only reason the 5870 isn't 2x the 4870 is because AMD are reaching the point of diminishing returns with their architecture. See, they still count on multi-way shaders, which we do know is very hard to get them all working at the same time. NVidia go for simpler shaders which is why, even with less of them, they've had no problem competing. Yes, the shaders run at a faster clock speed, but when you're pitting 240 up against 800, and winning, it's pretty telling about who's more efficient.

This is also why in some titles you'll see the 4890 so close to the 5850, even though the 5850 should destroy that card as they're the same architecture but the 5850 has much better specs. Some titles just don't play nicely with ATi's shader design, but the ones that do FLY on it.

In NVidia's case, they even specifically stated in the article they were disappointed with the shader efficiency with the GTX-280, which is a tell-tale sign that this part is to be a lot more efficient in it's shader use. Now, you increase shader efficiency and OVER double them and tell me what happens, along with more rops, a lot more memory bandwidth... There's a big reason why I say if it's less than double the performance I'll be in shock.