rchi84
In the zone
Let me take things a bit further.
In the current gen of cards, i find it really hard to justify a purchase of a 6970 or 570. Anyone who owns a 6950 can unlock the additional shaders and OC it at stock voltages to match the GPU speed of the 6970 (880 MHZ) with a bit of tweaking. Memory speed depends on the chip you've chosen, but usually, a 6950 from Asus or Powercolor can be memory OCd to match the memory on the 6970.
Cards like the Gigabyte SOC, Zotac Amp or even the Direct CU II 560 can match the performance of the 570, a solid 5-6K Rupees cheaper, which is a substantial amount of saving. I know that an OCd 570 will outrace an OCd 560 and almost match the 580, but if it saves me 6000 Rupees, then that's a compromise i can easily live with. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why these cards aren't so easy to get on the market.
All this is valid at at gaming around the resolution of 1200. But if you go higher, then both the 6970 and 570 don't match the performance of a 580 or even a 470 SLI. They're caught in a weird position, as they're too costly for the 1200 res gaming market, and too weak for the higher resolution market. That's why I can't see how long both Nvidia and AMD can hope to move bigger numbers on these cards without a drastic price drop.
The 6990 and the 590 are more useful as proof of concept, to show the maximum performance limits of the current architecture, rather than actually become sales leaders.
In the current gen of cards, i find it really hard to justify a purchase of a 6970 or 570. Anyone who owns a 6950 can unlock the additional shaders and OC it at stock voltages to match the GPU speed of the 6970 (880 MHZ) with a bit of tweaking. Memory speed depends on the chip you've chosen, but usually, a 6950 from Asus or Powercolor can be memory OCd to match the memory on the 6970.
Cards like the Gigabyte SOC, Zotac Amp or even the Direct CU II 560 can match the performance of the 570, a solid 5-6K Rupees cheaper, which is a substantial amount of saving. I know that an OCd 570 will outrace an OCd 560 and almost match the 580, but if it saves me 6000 Rupees, then that's a compromise i can easily live with. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why these cards aren't so easy to get on the market.
All this is valid at at gaming around the resolution of 1200. But if you go higher, then both the 6970 and 570 don't match the performance of a 580 or even a 470 SLI. They're caught in a weird position, as they're too costly for the 1200 res gaming market, and too weak for the higher resolution market. That's why I can't see how long both Nvidia and AMD can hope to move bigger numbers on these cards without a drastic price drop.
The 6990 and the 590 are more useful as proof of concept, to show the maximum performance limits of the current architecture, rather than actually become sales leaders.
its toooooo gooood. cant wait. 
