I´ve got my 5970 since a week and discovered about the same issues as mentioned in the thread. I´ve got a Sapphire OC version as well and the thing about the BIOS is something that shouldn´t happen again. There are certainty several gamer out there, who bought this card and some of them probably dont´ want to flash a bios because they´re not familiar with it and don´t want risk any damage. It is also the principle that matters. You don´t want to buy a brand new card for ~700$ and have to spend about 3 hours with research to get it running properly.. Apart from that i have to say, that the performance is very good. Even Crysis @ 1920x1080 4xAA maxed out runs quite smooth, even if the drivers are far away from beeing optimized.
One last point i just got wind of is this pic: . How are we supposed to put a normal pot on there with the 2 chips standing over?..