For performance => 5850, for technology => 6850!

Wait for the Radeon HD6900-Series.

Because the releasing date is near too. Sometime, you might get price cut because AMD and Nvidia is competing like hell.

It would be hard to imagine 6990 will be. and I dont think it will be dual 6870, because thats gonna be equal performance with 5970.

Base on this fact, Cayman will not beat 580 because it need to fit the TDP for dual card. but AMD might just use 6990(dual underclock cayman) to beat GTX580.

If Cayman XT is 300w, then AMD will not able to make hd6990 within 300w TDP even with 2 underclock cayman. U dont want a HD6990 become a 500w graphic card.

The way I see it is Cayman vs GTX580 is going to be like 5870 vs GTX480. If AMD want to fit 2 Cayman chip within 300w TDP. It just mean they cannot make a huge high power chip alone, this doesnt even fit AMD "Sweet spot design".

Even tho Cayman may be more efficient than Fermi, but I dont think it can be twice as efficient as Fermi. Cayman performance will be about 80-90% of GTX580. The delay is more like because AMD take another month to look into any additional tweaks to get extra performance, so Cayman performance wont fall too far away from GTX580 & repeat the success of 5870.

why amd news from fudzilla saying 6970 will b slower than 580. im confused!! help!!

bought 5870 at 1400 never regretted it(don dare)

I think I'll upgrade when 7 series comes out.

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Added on November 21, 2010, 11:14 pmI think I'll upgrade when 7 or 8 series comes out.

If I don't play at full hd reso my game wont be in full screen -.-

Want to ask
which ati graphics card can ply max setting @1920x1080 without any lag on call of duty black ops?

btw 8tvt,

ur rig = OC proc + HD 6850 + 4 HDD
psu is 400w only? izit enuf?

just updated my cat 10.4 to 10.11 for my 4850 and
i just realize that the "AMD Radeon" branding still not apply on their Catalyst driver...the "ATI Radeon" is still there...

HD 6990 spec finalized

http://www.hardware-infos.com/news.php?news=3767

it's in german, use google translate.

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Added on November 23, 2010, 9:37 am
there is chance of it being faster.

gtx 580 is 30% faster then 6870.
a 6870 has 1120 shader, which is 58.3333% of 6970 total shader.
extra 41.6667% shader on 6970 most prbably will translate to @ least 30% performance boost, or even more.

Uh-oh.. someone's got an explanation to do... Looks like AMD is downgrading the IQ for better performance..
Testing NVIDIA vs AMD Image Quality
Source: AMD Radeon HD6870 test

Yes, optimization is normal. AMD does make the option to turn off Catalyst AI, but usually in benchmarks, the testers do not change the settings of the CP. This will result in higher performance in benchmarks, no? If it's okay to be like that, then AMD and NVIDIA should make the default settings to be the lowest quality so their performance is at its best.

That's why most 3DMark Vantage Competition had forbid users to use Nvidia GPU to run PhysX test.
Because the score they're getting will be like 2x or 3x more than usual. 

I've tested in benchmarks and got around 5% improvement going from Quality to High Performance [NVIDIA CP].

But, I can't notice the Graphics Difference(by bare eyes) between High Performance vs Quality/High Quality for Nvidia GPU.
So, setting it up for High Performance is better.
Similar to AMD/ATI, there's also significant Graphics Difference between High Performance vs High Quality.

AMD and Nvidia both have different optimization on every games.
Some games favour Nvidia and some to AMD. Similarly, the Graphics Quality too.