Quote Originally Posted by SKYMTL View Post
Oh, I agree. Speculation by its very nature is fun but problems arise when people base their purchasing decisions on speculations. It also doesn't make any sense to believe in hype and then rant because reality brought things crashing down...

I am not saying this is what's going to happen but people have to remember that massive performance boosts do come with a SIGNIFICANT number of downfalls (die size, power consumption, cost, profit margins, etc) when maintaining a status quo manufacturing process - in this case 40nm.

There isn't a company in this world that could overcome any of these without some kind of miracle product. I am sure we'd all agree that TSMC's 40nm process isn't one that can be refined any more to allow for that kind of genre breaking design revolution.
Exactly what I was thinking as well...

I'm looking at it like this; either it'll beat the GTX580 and cost the same or more($499 price bracket), it'll lose to the GTX580 but be faster than the 570 and hit the $399 bracket, or it'll lose to the GTX570 and hit the $349 bracket. Considering this is AMD's biggest chip since the R600, I heavily doubt AMD could get by with it if it loses to the GTX570, but at the same time I'm not expecting it to take down the GTX580(if it could, I don't see why AMD would be aiming for the 6990 so quickly after), so I'm anticipating it to be around GTX 570 performance and between $399 and $449.

If I'm wrong, then happy day, if I'm not I won't be disappointed. This is just how things appear to me pre-release. Personally, I'm actually more interested right now in the fight between the GTX570 and the 6950 assuming they end up in the same price bracket. One of those two cards are very likely to end up in my system shortly after release.