New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[tajoh111]

IMO, anyone buying a graphics card with the intention of installing it themselves should be tech savvy enough not to just base their purchase on model numbers.

I don't believe so many people on XS can be confused about the naming scheme! You guys must've been in a whole world of insanity when Nvidia moved from 9xxxGTX to GTX2x0?

I already said this. Not too many people will upgrade from a 5870 to a 6870. I don't think very many people upgraded from 8800gt to 9800gt either. People don't buy every generation, its too expensive. The people who are hardcore enough to upgrade every generation are likely a hardware enthusiast that knows better.

What I can see happening alot is people upgrading from a 4870 to a 6870 and being quite disappointed in performance, none of these people know a 6970 big chip is the real successor to their card because there never has been a single chip 6970. And if the bench marks are correct, they are looking at a 50-60% performance increase from a 2 generation wait, which is honestly really crappy. If I sold my card for 60 dollars(a 4870) and spent 215 dollars(taxes, shipping, 250-260msrP), I would feel I should have kept my old card or got something better. I think to really get use out of eyefinity, you need something with atleast 5870 power so that 50-60% performance jump would be even more disappointing if I got an eyefinity setup..

At the rate both company are pumping out stuff, I would expect a 3x increase or 1.7 per generation or 2.89.

Pricing won't help a regular consumer make a wiser decision because they paid a similar amount for their 4870.