AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 confirmed to be launched on 22.10.2010

[Solus Corvus]

[snip]

You can judge the new generation however you want. But you aren't being that realistic, from my perspective.

We all knew that this generation wasn't going to as big of a leap as we hoped after TSMC canceled 32nm. NI being designed for 32nm and then having to be reworked in short order to fit on 40nm - things could have been worse, IMO. Who knows what the pricing\naming structure would have been like if 32nm wasn't canceled.

If you look at it from the perspective of all the other products we can get now versus their prices then the rumored price/performance of these new parts isn't bad. It's an improvement over last generation. Even if it isn't as big of an improvement that we, perhaps unrealistically, had expected. If the company prices products commensurate with market pressures and fabrication costs then what is wrong, the company or your expectations?

As for the naming structure, as I have said before, I don't like it. For the past few generations ATI's top single chip was *870 and it should have stayed that way, IMO.

Nvidia will be fine. They can lean on their workstation and HPC cards just like AMD is leaning on its graphics division. If Nvidia is for a time not the dominant discreet GPU maker it could ultimately lead to a more competitive marketplace. Maybe not in this generation, but the more people that are willing to switch between AMD and Nvidia when either releases a good product means that they both have to fight harder for our money. That's better then in the recent past when most wouldn't look twice at a non-Nvidia card.