Quote Originally Posted by mAJORD View Post
can't compare HD4890-HD5870.

There was some obvious efficency lost moving to the DX11.. just look at HD5770 vs 5830 vs 4890
Yes, I know, but they got to double the specs of everything which makes up for much of the bottlenecks. The 6970 is not going to get that luxury and the biggest increase will be the number of real shaders, hence the size of the chip not reaching gtx 480.

If they can improve the performance by 50% that already shows a huge efficiency jump. I am still thinking about 40% because I think they will keep the chip under 400mm2.

I think the huge increase in efficiency can be easily noticed from the following comparison.

(double TMU, Double ROPS, Double shaders, a tad faster memory) = 44% increase.

50% increase in shaders, significantly faster memory = 40 percent in speed.

Even if they get 40%, considering how they are not beefing up the rest of the architecture as much, it will still be an accomplishment considering they are on the same node.