What is coming ?

There might be an Asus Mars II coming.

if something like 5970 still can't satisfy you hunger for performance then i advice to hold onto your GTX260 right now and wait for the second generation dx11 cards from both camp  

thats what i am doing ........ but how long do we have to wait?

does anyone have any news on release dates?

What exactly are you finding uninspiring? The GTX 480 is basically twice as fast as your GTX 260 and the HD5870 nearly so plus you can get that same performance or better for much less money by OCing an HD5850 or GTX 470. I don't know what you are expecting but if doubling your performance isn't enough then your standards are unreasonable imo.

nobody really knows the exact time when nvidia or ati will release their cards since there's always delays, but from what i've heard they are suppose to lunch around the end of this year and/or in the beginning of the next year, and a 5970 is an extreme graphics card and you WILL be satisfied with its performance

I can honestly see ATI releasing it's cards before Nvidia again just by looking at the time line of what came out when (i mean the 460 was released what, a week ago?), so if you're a big Nvidia guy you might be out of luck for quite a while...

What is uninspiring is the fact that both the gtx480 and the hd5870 are only just on par with a gtx295 and even the hd5970 is not that much faster.
look at the test results below

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-480,review-31...

when it came out the 8800gtx was a jump forward as was the gtx295, the current offerings are not even a stagger forward with the exception of the way overpriced 5970.
the only thing current cards offer extra over the previous generation is dx11 and that is not even in wide use yet.......

so where is the inspiration ?
where is the aaagghhh i want one of those !!!

and typically i now have the money to buy something and there is nothing out there to buy  

i want a 495 gtx or an ati equivalent .................

This is all you should be worried about now, considering your standards.

Yeah, the GTX 295 was a "jump forward" perhaps to people who couldn't attach a crossfire/SLI cable on their own... Why are you comparing a dual GPU card that you don't even own to single GPU cards anyway? How is that a valid perspective unless you a purposely going out of your way to look at the new cards in a negative light? How can you look at cards more than twice as fast as your own with a number of more advanced features/technologies and think "nope, not good enough"? The HD5970 is the only valid card you can compare to the GTX 295 and it is in fact approximately 30% faster. If you find that underwhelming then don't purchase the card. Don't sit around waiting for Nvidia to shove two gpus on one card when you can easily SLI two or three GTX 480/70/60s on your own. Exactly what resolution are you running anyway(with a GTX 260 no less) that you could possibly be disappointed by the performance of the current generations high end cards?

i read on xbitlabs that amd is going to release the 6000 series before the end of this year.

i'll try to find the link

here it is: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/201007152245...


"In the second half of the year, we expect GPU demand to remain healthy and supply constraints to ease. We remain on track to bolster our GPU leadership with the introduction of our second-generation DirectX 11 graphics products later this year. [...] We will start introducing the second-generation of our DX 11 products before the end of the year,"

PCi-3.0 probably by end of this year along with HD 6000 series. just a hunch

Oh, and whys that?

Now thats more like it  

and a little more time to save some more cash ........ perfect thank you for the link and the news