Nvidia confirms the GTX 580

[cegras]

I wonder why the expectation for the 6970 are so high? The only thing we have gotten so far is a 3dmark score which appears about 10% lower than the gtx 580.

I can see cayman xt beating the gtx 580 in crysis, but other games, it's going to be an uphill battle. Cayman xt needs to be somewhere around 45% faster to be significantly faster than a 5870 which is going to be difficult on the same process. Barts xt efficiency per die size is being inflated by its gains which are primarily gained through clocks, including its tessellation.

Cayman appears to have 50% more real shaders at this point and I remember reading they are slightly slightly less powerful than the ones found in cypress and unless they completely use those 50% extra shaders, its going to significantly lower than a 50% gain in performance, especially with first generation drivers.

I don't think the 3dmark was very diagnostic of 68xx performance at all.