Quote Originally Posted by hurrdurr View Post
But it was you who said you needed a die shrink to call it a new generation. By your logic AMD should have never named Barts or Cayman as the 6xxx series; in spite of the fact that there are at least 5 new cards on this series. 5750 5770 5830 5850 5870 5970... where do you add five more cards? And maybe even more difficultly, how do you name your new cards so that the performance is in accord with the older cards and their performance?

Plus, by your logic the 4800 series shouldn't be called a new generation because they have been on the same node with 3800s. Yet 4800s performance blew 3800's away completely.
I personally mean you need a shrink to archive a real new generation. Because it's really hard to beat the performance and power of the dual-GPU of the last generator with a single-GPU based on the same 40nm.

Vi discussed this matter widely in Nvidia confirms the GTX 580 , and I'm not going to repeat it, but the final conclusion/undressing was that you need the architectural-changes who can archive a new level of performance/power to call it a "new generation".

It has been the rule of thumb in the past that, the top single-GPU of a new generation usually beats/matches the double-GPU of last generation in performance and heat/power, with almost same price of the last gen single-GPU. I want to see Cayman doing it, otherwise it will be a "fake" new generation.