I just might be upgrading my video card soon, so I'm starting to poke around for options. I am currently gaming with a HD 5770 on a 1920x1080 res, playing mostly flight sims (DCS series) and Skyrim, Dragon Age 2, Shogun... I just managed to OC my i5 750 to 4.1GHz so I think I'm still good in the CPU department.

I'm hoping to upgrade to a single-card config (don't want the hassle of XFire or SLI), and with the 6970 only about £40-50 more than the 6950, I am wondering if it is worth it? Or is there a better nVidia equivalent? However, since I will eventually be running triple-screen, I don't think nVidia does that yet so ATI/AMD is still my best bet, right?

Looking at Tom's GPU hierarchy chart, the 6950 is 3 tiers and the 6970 is 4 tiers above my 5770. Also, as both 6XXX come in 2GB configurations vs my 5770's 1GB, I suspect I will see a significant (both measureable and noticeable!) upgrade in eye-candy and smoothness, correct?

You can get a 6950 and mod it slightly by reflashing bios and turn it into a 6970...

Not done it on mine yet.. nor feeling the need too.. as hardly any gains were seen over my HD4890 in DCS titles to the 6950 I now have, what I can do though is turn on all the fancy stuff without it hurting FPS, but no major gains at all in FPS from changing cards in BS 2 or A-10C nor ArmA 2

YES! I went from 2 X 4850s to a HIS 6970 reference design card and the change was mind- and eye-boggling, even for so-called "CPU-bound" games like IL2 '46.

The change was so abrupt I even started to question whether I really needed to update the rest of my rig (had an e8400 based machine); but since the parts for the new computer were already ordered and shipped (and since the co-Minister of Family Finance had already approved the expenditures) I did anyway.

My games are mainly IL2 and RoF, but I don't see any reason you won't also see a dramatic improvement.

Looking at my favourite eletronics e-tailers, there hasn't been much of a drop (if any) in the price of the 6970 since I bought it in June for $C320... perhaps if you wait another week until January 9th [the 7970 release date] you might get a better deal. IMHO, waiting those 6 days might be worth it.

As I understand, this is no longer possible in the latest hardware revisions of the cards. If you do get a card from the initial release, this may still be entirely possible.

Also -Ice, since you are a DCS flier, be aware that there are a few minor issues with the Catalyst drivers and the 6XXX cards that manifests as flashing squares in A-10C and Blackshark if you run the latest drivers and use in-game HDR.

It is solved (for now) by using older Catalyst (11.6 if I recall), but the trade off is that you loose the optimizations for the latest games.

I just don't use HDR for now.

Bib, yep, I'm now aware of that, but it isn't a show stopper AFAIK. I'm also not in a rush, my eventual purchase would largely depend on how much extra cash I have at the end of this month, plus hoping to be able to dispose of my current card to "reduce the cost" of the new one. I do hope the new 7XXX card will push the prices down a bit. £50 too much to ask?

I'm not sure, but I think the 2GB ones are still "firmware upgradable". The 1GB versions don't have that dual-BIOS switch near the CF-connector like the 2GB version. Like I said, I'm not sure.

I did a quick search, and indeed you have to have a reference design card in order to unlock the shaders with a BIOS update.

However, MSI provides a way to do it in their "Twin Frozr III" cards:

http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/msi_r6950_twin_froz_iii_power_edition_unlocking,1.html

I always hear about this "unlock card B so that it becomes card A or even faster." However, what happens if I buy card A then unlock/overclock it? Won't it leave card B in the dust? Also, why buy something with the hopes that it may have some desirable characteristic which it may not have?

Yeah you need a reference card to unlock the 6950 to 6970 speeds - which you'll have to ask for or do your research.

I did a lot of research on 6950 v 6970 when purchasing mine. The 6970 is only 10% faster than the 6950. You'll have to do the math if you think paying more for 10% performance is worth it. Thinking about it in RL terms, if you're running A-10 at 40fps then with a 6970 you'll get 44 fps - so not a lot of increase for whatever the $$ difference is.
I decided on 2x6950's as they scaled better in CF performance than 6970's going by price.

You can't go wrong with either but what I do recommend is going with a 2gb version for high AA. You'll soon find that 1Gb won't cut it for higher resolutions and AA.

If you can wait, wait a month. The 7xxx series is being released this month which should push 6xxx cards down.