Quote Originally Posted by Sn0wm@n View Post
ok so if i get what sayaa said ... ati and nvidia send their last gen card to be a test card form the new fab process... if it come back according to expected specs it means it went well and they can start the real production of intended product right ????
sortof, yeah... it doesnt matter if it comes back alright or not, the important part is that its a known to work design, so if something goes wrong, its 99% because of the new mfc process and not a design flaw. if you start a new design on a new process things can get messy... thats why intel and amd always shrink and then start a new design on a known process, ie tick tock...

Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
Would someone link me to this 9.11 versus 10.3 article you are all talking about? I have just finished rebenching all the ATI cards with 10.3 drivers and I am seeing very little to no difference between 9.12 and 10.3 on the majority of cards other than the HD 5970...
you bench with an oced cpu, right?
that might explain it... a lot of driver tweaks are related to cpu performance, thats why drivers tend to make the biggest difference on old systems and have small or no impacts on overclocked or highend systems. OR they only show in xfire and sli, where cpu perf is a factor again...

Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
- The HD 5970 @ $700 is next to non-existent. This means NVIDIA can literally price the GTX 480 (depending on performance) close to the HD 5970 and still have the cards sell extremely well.
i dont think its impossible to buy a 5970 if you want to buy one... availability is low, but isnt that because there isnt that high of a demand for it?
and why are you comparing the 480 with the 5970? and then mention availability? so you think the 480 will be widely available? seriously?

the comment about 1150mhz rv870 on air is odd...
i find that hard to believe... maybe with a massive heatsink, and even then the numbers of those cards should be rather small... but hey, ati might be able to bin as many 1150 rv870 gpus as nvidia can get 480s

1150 = 850 + 35%
but you need some headroom for clocks, so if they can clock to 1150 they would be sold as 1100... still a healthy boost and it might get rv870 into gf100 perf terriroty...

i think this is very unrealistic, but IF ati or one of their partners manages to push a single rv870 card to 480 levels... that would be VERY impressive...
a 2bn gpu perfmorming like a 3bn gpu...