Just 3 more weeks till we get some benchmarks and find out!!!

*Tears*

im placing the bet now the twice-as-expensive gtx 280 will be better

yea same, I have $900 saved up for my new card, case, and cooler so I could oc to the sky on my existing set-up

Yes, but then overall, (IMO) I would believe the GTX 280X2? will have the highest performance overall, although I don't know how they would implement their cooling technology on such a monster card. However the 4870X2 would probably be the better bang for the buck than the GTX280, and most likely perform better. Although I can see the GTX280 taking the lead in games that do not support sli/crossfire. As for me, I am looking for a card in the $300-400 range ($400-500CAD) such as the GTX 260 or the 4870. And I am hoping that they will give me more than 50% performance over my 8800GTS. Considering that the 9800GTX is %30 higher on average, I could see this being true.

Thanks, Nico

ATI all the way, we need to reign the leash on Nvidia a little. Plus I think the ATI cards will perform close to the GTX260/280 and be much cheaper, feels like ATI's second coming. No I am not an ATI fanboy like the Nvidia fanboys here, never owned an ATI card even through the 7 series B.S. I'm just getting tired of Nvidia screwing us over with high prices and sitting on their as- butts while the GPU performance stands still. I don't care if you wont buy an ATI card for whatever reason, we just need the competition to reduce prices and most of all INCREASE FUTURE CARD'S PERFORMANCE!

I think it is a sink or swim moment for ATI and I like blood raven, believe we need them to swim to lower the costs for us, the consumer and in turn increase competitiveness across the board.

Cost to performance ratios have been comparably dormant for too long now, and on that note I think backwards compatibility for older games such as WoW and EQ2 have had far too many issues with the newer cards. I do hope that this isn't an issue for the next generation of cards, drivers that actually work on release day would be a blessing.

My two cents.

What are you talking about?

Seriously, increase competitiveness?
It's now more competitive than it was in the GF7/X1K days and GF6/X8 days, and far more so than the early G80 era and early R600 era.

And as for cost/performance ratios, they've never been better. The GTS-512 has been selling for around $200 for a month (now under $180 AMR) the HD3870-GDDR4 for $150/$130 after Rebate; now compare that to the GTX for most of it's life at $600, the GTS-640 at $400+ GTS-320 at $300+ and the X1900XTs at $300+ X1900XTXs at $400+ most of their lives and GF6800GT at $300+ until the end.
Seriously, we've never had it this good !!

90% of the Ultra's performance for 1/3 of the MSRP, when have we ever had a card value like that before?
The only area that you could argue there is limited competition is the eWang cards, and even then there's huge pressure from the cards below them.
Sure the Ultra's not cheap, the GX2 and X2 aren't cheap, but no one talks about cost/performance for those cards anyways, and even then an X2 for $300.

Man it's never been better except for the 'unlocking' era of cards.

Yeah, that would've been nice, but it was bound to be expensive with it being a huge chip, lotsa memory (remember basically minimum 1GB due to the interface and ROP count), and complex PCB.

Also I think nV wants to try and re-establish the $600 MSRP they used to have after all the recent bargains (which don't make them money if they have low yields).

Funny thing is that the INQ kinda commented on this just today with Charlie confirming the yields, complexity issues, but also saying nV might low ball their launch prices to create an artificially low MSRP (which of course will then be out of stock everywhere) to create demand away from the other cards. I doubt it, but if you're looking for a deal, look to to your local e-tailer on launch day, because if they pull that trick again it may be around fro a day and then gone for weeks.

I'm just sad fot those of us that bought the 3870's and 8800gt's and paid 300 for them when now they're on sale for as low as 150 or 200. Just hope the price war goes on so we can all benefit from the great deals that are coming.

It will be "better" but it might still be a failure, if leaked e-mails are true:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] ssor-tapes

Despite the flames made by Nvidia fans to the article, the essential concept that GTX280 at 65nm runs into yield, design and price issues makes sense, and that Nvidia won't have viable cards until a die shrink.

IMHO, the days of monster cards are going fast and this might be Nvidia's last summer of love from gamers who just want an extra 10 fps in Crysis.

Sadly, not only does Huang talk trash about his competitors, and deny the value of dual GPU on one PCB cards, but Nvidia also relies upon promotions to get game companies in line that are as dodgy as Intel's old OEM rebate program.

Yes, it should be faster, but all that gets is the crown if the part is not available at an already overly high MSRP.

The real competition will arrive with the 4870x2 in late summer or fall. Since a 4870 doesn't provide real performance over my 3870x2, I'm waiting to get the next dual GPU on one PCB card.

It will be fun to see if triple SLI GTX280's can match two 4870x2's in CrossfireX. My bet's on the CrossfireX but then again, I am an ATI fan and have been since the Radeon 8500.

Will the GTX280 be Nvidia's next FX5800? Only time will tell, but I bet they release dodgy drivers that affect image quality (Crysis demo water style) to make a bare win in the benchies.

If the linked article from Charlie is right, then Nvidia's in a situation with 65nm monster cards that AMD was in with 65nm quads. The thermals and performance isn't there vs. the competitor and the company has to rely on fan loyalty and a 17% or so increase over the last gen.

Personally, Intel failed technologically once and won in the marketplace still. Nvidia failed with the FX series and stayed ahead. It seems there's just too much dislike of AMD and ATI for Nvidia to really go away. As long as the fanboys set aside their $600 to $900 for cards that are only a smidgen better than ATI's mainstream in a few games, then I think Nvidia will survive.

I'd prefer to see them survive as just Via's partner against the Atom, but that's because I really don't like corporate CEO's talking the way Huang's been doing lately. I like competition that brings both innovation and prices that make consumers and investors happy, but I'm tired of cult of personalities and fan boy marketing empires.

Man, I agree with you, I'm tired with nvidia ripping us off with thie "new" generation cards, I'm the kind of person that try to find the best bang for the buck and right now I'm keeping my eye on ATi because they deliver almost the same performance as nvidia (I have an 8800 GTS 320 MB G80). Let's hope that ATi keeps their prices low and performance high,

I definitely think AMD will be having better yields, but Nvidia is going to convincingly take the performance crown until 4870x2 comes. Then maybe there will be competition at ultra high end.

Since of late the INQ has been more right than wrong.

That's on the assumption the shrink will go without a hitch. It might as long as they don't tweak stuff, but nothing's guaranteed.

So was the FX5800U at some DX8 stuff and OGL.

The kind you buy from some guy in LasVegas, remember they lost money on the GF8800GT.

The GTX280 is only an economically sensible product if it contributes to the bottom line. The funny thing is that it's biggest benefit will likely not be direct, but the halo effect if it is the top performer. It may lose 10s of millions of dollars, but the effect on nV's other cards might be enough to be worth it like a PR/Ad campaign.

Too far out to tell really, but unlikely that the true heir to the GTX2xx line will be similar to what it is. And both ATi and nV will likely have to compete with intel at that point in time.

It should be and at least less is gonna be wasted, when something goes wrong...

From what I understand, the 92b's will have to fend off the 4xxx series because even after the die shrink on the G2xx's , the die will still be as large as the G80's, which were hot cards, and still drew alot of power. So from top to bottom in a physical sense, itll be awhile before they can even do that. And then, they have this huge die to sell. I mean, the die in the G280 is one of the largest ever made, and yes , more to go wrong, but all processor makers include an overhead amount, just in case, which is why after they get the bugs out, and the yields do go up, they have extra "room" for the refresh

Yeah, and yields from he G92 were rather poor according to nV's CFO.

I'm sure that without pressure from ATi they would've charged more for them, and likely would've profited more, but it ended up losing money for them due to a combination of both issues.

Yeah, I don't know but the FX sucked at that time and still the FX5200 sold well, the R9000 of course was an odd fish in that it wasn't like the R9700, but then again neight was the MX series which was still being sold.

I'm certain that the X1900 helped sell a bunch of X1600s despite the GF7600 being a bit better at the time, then with the GF8800 arguably the HD2600 is slightly better in it's laptop form, but the GF8600M still gets the halo effect, but on the desktop I'd argue that it's tougher (due to higher clocks) where the GF8600 is a tigher race, and most people look at the AA results even though the cards aren't meant for AA really so it'd be tough to say what's a Halo effect and what's just a well researched purchase.

i wonder how bad the yield is for the GT200 chip as nvidia have to use 65nm at first as a back up plan to the 55nm.would the 55nm will be that cooler given the massive size of the GT200.

yeah, thats pretty annoying I must admit. I have only had nVidia cards untill my first ATI Radeon HD2600XT. I just loved it. I saw image quality improvement with naked eyes, so its not just bogus, and since then I can call myself ATI fan. I am starting to hate nVidia for the driver tweaking stuff but they are doing that since long time ago, not only for the Crysis benchmark. ALL 3dMarks are examples how nVidia collaborates with developers so their cards have little advantage.

Another thing is that nVidia is sponsoring so many games that its just obvious that there should be some bias when it comes to performance.
I know that business is dirty word but thats the reality.

I am sure if ATI could do that, they would, too, but on the short stack its difficult to play bets.

If you are a game developer and for example nVidia sposor a game with 1 mil and the whole game budget is 5-6 mil, then its a LARGE sponsorship so the developer will make every possible enchancements for the nVidia architecture and not bother at all to ATI (well may be just a little so that game dont crashes and stuff), so then ATI are in behind and need to optimize thier drivers for the actual game.

The world is not perfect at all after all

GTX280 or 4870CF? ....

We would know when Computex starts on monday.

I'm dying to read Thunderman's comments on this though

back to all this talk of nvidia's lies, you cant forget the way they blurred the IQ on all the GF7XXX cards for better frames rates cuz the X1800, X1900, & X1950 were raping the 7800 & 7900, & 7950