Quote Originally Posted by hurrdurr View Post
Yep. I took one step further in nerdiness and counted the actual distance in pixels between the placements. The bottom of the 5850 box and the 5870 box have a 50 pixel vertical difference, whereas 5870 and 5970 is roughly 135. We know for a fact that HD5870 is around 17 percent faster than HD5850, and HD5970 is around 55 percent faster than the HD5850. Doing the math, I can definitely say that the placements of the boxes have a very good level of precision.

So why is 6990 only slightly higher than 5970? Two possible reasons:

1. There was simply not enough space on the slide and it had to be compressed
2. This is something I have been fearing: AMD will actually respect the 300W TDP limit, which would put HD6990 and HD5970 on the same TDP, and that means any increase in performance has to come solely from improvements in Performance/Watt, which cannot be so great given both products are produced in the same node, 40nm - so 5970 and 6990's performance won't be much different.
Seeing as the 6xxx seem to overclock a bit better than the 5xxx, it's not improbable that factory oc'ed 6990's could be more than just 15-20% faster than the current 5970.

It would be a good time for amd to allow 5xxx cards to be xfire'd with 6xxx cards. If the upgrade in performance is minimal, that would be an enticing way for users to buy the new cards AND gaining a lot more performance