Quote Originally Posted by Funky View Post
Fortunately the semiconductor industry does not work on what one person thinks.
It has always worked on what is possible at any given time while being financially viable.
Even Intel, which has loads of money and invests heavily in its own fab does this. They release new architecture on old fab and then shrink it mid way in its life.
This whole screw-up of 40nm and delayed move to 32nm was bound to happen sometime in GFX industry. The pace at which this industry has moved is the reason we are where we are. This was just waiting to happen.
The whole double the performance / frequency every generation bubble burst in CPU industry a while back. It is waiting to burst in GPU industry. It will be a miracle and incredible feat on AMD's part if Cayman ends up being as fast as 5970.
At the moment 32nm cant happen. Period.. Move on and concentrate on what we might get.

It will be an achievement in itself if they can manage even 10% performance increase over GTX 480 while being a smaller, less power hungry chip. Enough has changed on the chip level to call it a new series. Enough time has passed to call it a new series. Nvidia was late to the party, not AMD.
If you have been following, I'm not blaming AMD only, I've been making a scene in GTX 580 thread too. It's matter of "rules and definitions" that these guys (both of them) are redefining in this round. But AMD has started this new number-game with a "fake" new generation of 68xx, in this round.

What Cayman can do remains to be seen, and I'm not concluding it's a "fake" generation" yet. I'm sure it's a improvement, achievement, evolution etc.. of 40nm node. I'm still hoping AMD can deliver what they promising. I will have the same expectation about nVidia's promises for GTX 580 too actually.

But Cayman needs to beat the performance/power of 5970 to become a "real" new generation. I hope it can do it, and I believe many are expecting it, and will get disappointed otherwise.