Yeah I was hoping the 7970 was going to be another huge milestone leap card like the 8800GT and the 5870 were for their times, in those current reviews it seems more like the iterative 10-20% increase over the competition as most of the last few years of releases have been from both companies...

However overclocking is a good point, maybe if it can be highly overclocked or newer drivers bring out the performance (as the last few have done for the 5870), then indeed there could be a higher increase over the 580 GTX yet to be had.