This has been bugging me..

LOL welcome to life/real world

Like everything in life. They use a trial and error approach. They needed a card to compete with the HD 5000 ATI had, and they used what they could, as soon as they were able to. Then they refined it with the 460's and applied their new found knowledge to make a better chip.

Haven't you ever improved your skill level at something, even when nothing changed technologically?

Hi qwerty123h,
Welcome to the forums.
There is truth in what you say but there is a definite reasons for these small increases you are talking about.
As with pretty much everything in manufacturing going from proof of concept through to lab based trials and samples just do not add up to what you get when placed into a full production environment.
There are things that can be tweaked and improved upon that really only become apparent once in production. these tweaks are what the refresh is usually about within a life cycle of a GPU range.
This would have been the case had the origonal GF 100 chips turned out to perform as the GF110 do now.
Im guessing its not a GF100b as was on many product road maps because they had to adress more than would be done in a straight refresh, due to the poor performance of GF100. Usually its basically just down to a more mature process which leads to better yeilds and the chips being able to run at faster clock speeds. there is a little more to it than that but thats the main jist of it.
You have to wait for a new generation before you get a decent performance jump, personally i dont thing the 5 series is enough of a differance to really be classed as a new gen its more of a refresh but then i dont make the rules.

Mactronix  

Despite the constant stream of negativity surrounding the GTX480, for those who actually own one, it is a pretty damn good card. True there are issues, but those issues have been magnified and fed to people (like you, I'm assuming) who have gotten the idea that Nvidia just took a sh** and out came the GTX480. For the better part of 2010, the GTX480 has been the best, fastest single GPU with performance to overcome it's shortfalls, all of which were, in real life, no big deal.

Well, over the past year, we also saw a marked change in the video card landscape; Nvidia and it's board partners learned some lessons and refined the product. Have you read any reviews of the Gigabyte GTX480 Superoverclock? That is one great card. So, many of those lessons were incorporated into the GTX580/570. But the learning process apparently had to happen.

Now, with all that said, tomorrow I get my GTX580 in the mail. Anyone in the market for a slightly used GTX480? Cheap?

Allow me to point out the fact that you're the one buying each consecutive generation of bleeding edge hardware. No one is putting a gun to your head.

I purchased a GTX 295 last September and it has served me well for over a year now. And it's STILL excessive for anyone's (legitimate) needs.

Pro Tip: Technology advances quickly, and the rate of aging is equal. If you can't handle it, then stop buying it.

I know, it's almost like these businesses are trying to make money. What do they think we are, customers? Consumers?!