Upgrade for 8800 GTX?

The perfect card for you, my friend, the HD5870, or for $100 cheaper, the HD5850.

It's safe to say it looks like the HD 5870 may be the new 8800 GTX.

Good luck with that.

Nvidia will be coming out with a new card soon so I would wait and see.

The 8800gtx is a good card and using one now so maybe a few weeks for prices to go down a bit but if you can't wait go for either a 5870 or a 5850.

I replaced my 8800GTX with a 5870 two weeks ago. I've been happy as a clam ever since.

Over 2x the performance, and a lower TDP.

Eyefinity works just fine in all my games, including crysis.
DX11 would only make things better.

But you are right about Nvidia not showing any competition. I find it odd that you think that's an advantage for Nvidia. The longer Nvidia hides, the longer ATI gets to work on their 40nm tech. You honestly don't think ATI stopped moving forward when the 5800 chips first came out?

To say that just because the G80 was rehashed over and over in new cards says less about its "great" architecture and more about NVidia's R&D department. Further, more about ATi's R&D department until the 4800 series. Some say don't fix what isn't broke, but if NVidia had stopped saying "Just rehash, rename, and resell" maybe they wouldn't have these problems with their chip development right now.

Just to clarify so there's not any arguing about things I don't disagree with: The 8800GTX/Ultra were good cards, they lasted, but NVidia just built off of them for far too long because ATi wasn't bringing competition to the table like they should have which artificially rose prices and created a very large base of NVidia-prone customers. The HD 5870 is comparable because NVidia should've had the competition already (though they opted to not release competition, rather than release lesser performing competition which is better for PR), and say what you want, but we don't have any information on their new offerings yet which means saying the performance is comparable is all hype at this point.

Additionally, for a card to have the same performance as last generations dual-GPU performance king (GTX 295) at a lower price, with less heat, and considerably less power is nothing to scoff at when the competition hasn't even made a card in a lab to put up some numbers with. Lets also not forget they've already completed their budget line as well, bringing it downline to mainstream customers which is incredibly important. The performance king always sells cards on the low end, don't forget that. People were buying the 8600 and 8800 GTs because of the 8000's name, not to say they didn't have the performance to back it up. It's excellent engineering at the very least, which can be said of the 8800GTX/Ultra before they were being used for two years straight.

[quotemsg=2006426,17,464577]but lets be honest...With over double the spec of the GTX 280 its likely gonna be as fast if not a hell of a lot faster than the 5870. New architecture is made to bring IMPROVEMENTS. Even if the architecture stayed the same, same clocks etc... and had 512cores it would have beat the 5870 hands down!

Its probably called Fermi for a reason!!! (for those of you who dont know Enrico Fermi was a Nuclear physicist and had something to do with nuclear reactors...i make a simple connection of Nuclear reactor and POWER....i think Nvidia are trying to hint that the new cards will be a Power house, wether this is more to do with HPC or graphics or both we have yet to find out)

The point is it took ATI 2-3yrs to catch upto Nvidia with the G80...

Its likely the 5870 will have the crown less than 6months!

And to add, while yes i was dissapointed in Nvidia's lack of improvement over those 2-3years with renaming etc... Its a good job they did that really isnt it otherwise ATI would be out of business!!![/quotemsg

The point is Nvidia will miss the Christmas season, when they do come out many people will already have bought the 5870. Even if Fermi is faster, it will be meaningless to all but the fanboys since the 5870 can run any game. It will undoubtedly be much more expensive with nobody buying it except the aforementioned fanboys and the few people with more money than brains. If fermi IS faster still wont matter cause the 5900 will blow it away and still be the fastest single card. Its doubtful if Nvidia can make a dual fermi because of the power requirements and cost.]