Quote Originally Posted by zalbard View Post
There is an important note in regards to stock cooler GTX480 vs 5870 comparison.
5870 can reach 1000MHz GPU clock fairly easily (with 40% fan speed or so), which improves the performance by 17.65% over the stock card. Since GTX480 is around 15-20% faster than stock 5870 and is not quite overclockable on stock cooling (92C in Crysis at sock clocks? 1GHz 5870 is running cooler than that for me...), it might be worth considering going 5870 instead.
Yeah not to mention Fermi loses on price alone! In Australia

HD5850 = AUD$369-399
HD5870 = AUD$489-519
HD5970 = AUD$999-1099
GTX 470 = AUD$549-589
GTX 480 = AUD$829-899

2X HD5850 > GTX 480