Skipping a number is good salesmanship -- still may be the GTX680 under a different name. Even AMD is raising the "number designations" on old designs now (Nvidia started that practice quite a while back). May also want to get the first number "7" to correspond to the AMD first number "7" -- so as not to appear "behind" by using a "6".

I did read a rumor a few months back that the planned GTX680 design (planned for late this Fall originally) was moved to March/April due to serious problems. If they did a redesign, that could also be a reason to skip a number -- though its still a redesigned 680.

I notice most of the benchmarks are "high-tessellation" benchmarks at high-resolution. They show ratios, not FPS. AMD HD7970 also has high ratios under the same conditions. Nvidia numbers might be "projected numbers" based on "design goals" -- rather than actual FPS benchmark data.

Nonetheless, I don't expect Nvidia to turn out the "second fastest" card. They will do whatever it takes to claim the FPS crown

AMD HD7990 dual-CPU card is due in Q1 according to the latest rumor. Given the excellent CrossFireX scaling of HD7970 (close to 2x when it works), dual-GPU HD7990 could give the fastest FPS for a single-card on into the Fall.

Anyhow, the sooner Nvidia gets the GTX780 on the market the better (to lower AMD prices and speed up release of the HD8970). Competition is good

They wouldn't give us another 5800 FX, would they? Quite the hot unit, but I still had one of those in a Shuttle SFF.

Fudzilla rumor says the supply of HD7970 will be good on January 9. We'll see

the 7990 will be the card to get

Re: it's a monster. Anyone try to find a CPU that has as many transistors as this puppy? 4.3 Billion, not a Xeon, Itanium or any I looked at came close. 2.6 for a Xeon is where the list on Wiki ends. :p

I think this shows more about how far short the 6xxx series fell than anything else. It's faster than a 580, but it also costs more and came out a year later. And it's only like 10% faster, so if you just bought a 580 in the last few months it's certainly not cost-effective to buy this now.

AMD put themselves back into competition with nvidia, but they're not clearly leading like nvidia was last go around. How their new cards stack up in a few months will determine that...but my gut says we'll see a 680/780 that's like 10% faster than this one but costs slightly more.

In short, will going from $500 to $550 be worth it for you for 10% more speed? Will then going from $550 to $600 be worth it for another 10%?

Of course, I've not bought the top end card from anyone for years now. Perhaps the 9800 was the last ATI card I had that was tops at the time, since then I've gone with upgrading my card more frequently but buying 2nd-best, like my 5850 or now my 570.

DX11.1 seems like a big nothing, just like DX10.1 was, so that's irrelevant. Like DX10 itself, by the time we have enough out there using it to make it worthwhile, there will be a 2nd generation of cards using it that will do it better. Those early DX10 cards were just crappy at it, but they ran DX9 like mad.


The Jedi Master

If it's choosing between two new cards? I'd go for the 550$ one. In hardware, you would pay 50% more for 10% performance. When you were presented with the 6950 and 6970, they were priced 270€ and 330€ respectively, but they didn't differ 10% on average.

Agreed, I was hoping for the 7970 to be more than just the 10% gain over the 580 and was disappointed by that.

Also a single 7970 is as fast as my two 5870s, but the cost of the 5870's has come down to the point where you can buy two for ~$300:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD5870-1GB-PCIE-PB

I am not loyal to a particular brand but in this case I was rooting for the underdog ATI, IMHO it seems likely a 10% improvement will not hold out for long and at this point the main edge it has on NV is the 3+ monitor support, it remains to be seen if NV has that on their radar or not, if they do then ATI's business will be even more affected.

I am hoping both that the NV 680/780 are indeed a generation above in performance (not just 10% incremental), and that they support 3+ monitor, and that ATI has some better product not far behind the 7970 that has better performance, hopefully the 7970 is like the 6870 line which was not really better than the 5870 for other than crossfireX and with the recent driver updates even that benefit has been eroded, hopefully they have another product not far behind the 7970, like the 6970 which made the 6870 be something that was just in between generations release that most enthusiasts skipped.

The big improvement over GTX580 was at high resolutions and high graphics settings -- up to 30 percent IIRC and 20 percent typical. One would not expect much improvement at "normal" resolutions for a couple reasons. Also, as mentioned before, HD7970 at 1Gz seems to roughly equal two HD5870 in Crossfire (very respectable improvement for AMD fans).

Does indicate (to me), that the HD7970 and Nvidia competitive product (whenever its released) makes most sense for those running 3 monitors or one very high resolution monitor (well above 1920x1200). Most folks would be better served (price/performance wise) by the next lower card (e.g. HD7950), I imagine. Maybe even 2 cards lower for folks with normal monitors.

Personally, I think a 50 percent FPS improvement over what one already owns should be the minimum "tipping point" leading to a new card. That's "cold logic". Thing is, I don't always base my purchases on "cold logic"

This year there will be (quite) a few 4k TVs at the CES. Not sure if that'd be QFHD (or 3840 x 2160) or one of the other 3-4 resolutions associated with 4k.