Nvidia GTX 580 Reviews

[SKYMTL]

I don't see where you managed that leap of logic, but it seems like that would be something you could not possibly know. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt though assuming you explain your reasoning.

Sure.

In order to add additional geometry processing horsepower, several things need to be looked at. First of all, you need an expanded fixed function stage which contains additional tessellation horsepower which is necessary for much of that increased geometry performance. To match the increased tessellation power, an expanded shader processor array needs to be created in order to actually PROCESS the large increase in draw calls, etc. Finally, beefing up the cache structure is also a necessity in order to quickly and efficiently move information along the rendering pipeline.

Unfortunately, all of those items above take up space on a GPU die which in turn raises the number of transistors. NVIDIA did all of that and they ended up with a GPU sporting three billion transistors. AMD will need to do the same thing with their upcoming 40nm-based cards since if anything they will likely expand the SP count significantly (why wouldn't they). None of this come "free".

SKYMTL: Back to the 5970, most users that have these are not going to be attracted to the 580GTX in single gpu form and I wish you would have talked about that.

I think I understand what you are saying. However, I don't think the possibility of going from a HD5970 to a GTX 580 is even being discussed. What I did mention though is the inherent performance instability that dual card or dual GPU cards are known for. This isn't a case of "the drivers don't work" but simply an observation that single GPU cards will have consistent performance (most of the time) while dual solutions are usually waiting for driver updates, etc in order to live up to their absolute potential in the newest games.

I don't know about you but I am sure most gamers would want near-full performance from day one rather than waiting for drivers / app profiles weeks after a game is released in order to achieve full performance from their $500 purchase.