Quote Originally Posted by DarthShader View Post
The 6970 was not meant to fight the with 580, the 6990 is.
No. That is incorrect.

The HD 6970 was meant to compete with the GTX 480. NVIDIA effectively one-upped AMD by releasing the GTX 580 and GTX 570 which meant that AMD's new card suddenly found itself competing with a $350 GTX 570 instead of a $500 GTX 480.

Personally, I hope that NVIDIA never releases a dual GPU card. It's just a waste of time and resources in an era where every motherboard in the $200+ range sports dual card functionality. Back when P35 was around, it made sense. Now it's just a play for bragging rights regardless of how buggy and problem-prone the card will become. And whether or not any will admit it, there is no magical mojo that can be added to a dual GPU product which will make it any more appealing than two dedicated separate cards.



Back on track:

Like it or not there is a reason why AMD is going to be allowing their board partners to release 1GB version of the higher-end SKUs and will be releasing a "performance" 11.1a "hotfix" right before NVIDIA introduces new products. At this point in time they are worried over the implications of a potential sub-$300 card which could potentially put a good portion of their current lineup to shame. NVIDIA did the same with the GTX 460 OC versions when the HD 6800-series was introduced.

Unfortunately, for all intents and purposes it looks like the mid-Feb release of 1GB AMD SKUs could be a pipe dream. I have talked to a number of board partners and quite a few don't even have these lower-priced cards on their roadmaps yet. Hopefully these won't be vaporware like the GTX 460 SE ended up being.