Realistically however they only need a 230-50mm^2 5780/5790 variant to slot in between Cypress and Juniper. They can premiere the new architecture this year but they don't exactly need to rush out replacements. They could sell the cheap one at $200 and the expensive one at $230 which fills the hole which the GTX 460 is taking adantage of. Then next year they can shrink it down to 28nm and it can become the regular 67xx series of GPU and perhaps even cover the 66xx range as well.

http://www.digitalversus.com/3d-films-and-games-with-glasses-from-ati-before-christmas-article-1086.html

Interview from July 22.

Q: 3D technology with active glasses is indeed the most popular today.

SP: So the response to that is that yes we are working on it and we do want to enter this market.

Q: When will we be seeing this??
 
TM: We can't talk about exact dates but we believe it's going to happen in the second half of this year.
SP: We don't have permission to announce the exact date but it's going to be in the next few months.

All I know is that I learned my lesson the hard way. I had 4650 and dual core AMD (4400) 3 years ago and I didnt game much cause it was chugging in Gears of War and Bioshock.Console version looked better or ran smoother depending on the settings.

Afterwards I decided to "upgrade" to the GTS250...which was better than 4650 but not by much. Resident Evil 5 came out and the game ran like shit using that card. Afterwards I got a gtx 260 and 3D vision, thinking it will be enough. Boy was I wrong. I could run Gears and Bioshock very good in 2D but 3D vision was a monster. Cpu became a bottleneck as well.

Then I just said screw it and got a gtx295 and AMD 965 black. I am finally content with computer performance...1000 dollars later :)

I guess it depends on the person, but some people, and most console owners really need to run the PC games at high to get their moneys worth. Otherwise may as well spend 199 and play it on the 360...

The GTX 460 is a bigger chip than Cypress and it's yielding worse. They could sell the 5870 at $200 and make more profit than Nvidia. Just putting the 5850 at $250 and 5830 at $180 would depress GTX 460 sales, and I think they'll do that when supply improves.

Southern Islands is going to have a 20-30% boost in IPC and an increase in shader count too.

I so freaking agree.

There's not even a big difference between the same games on Xbox 360 as on highest settings on my PC such as GTA4, Fallout 3, Assassin's Creed, Bad Company, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Resi 5, Dead Space and Far Cry 2. Although I have "only" a Radeon 4850.

and the cpu ill allow me to run games like crysis at medium to high settings right?

On a 1650 by 1050 monitor or less, yes definately. It can run Crysis at 30FPS on gamer settings at 1920 by 1080 but only just.

What resolution is your monitor btw, im embarrassed that I forgot to ask!

The GTX 460 is a ~330mm^2 chip. Charlie was wrong btw. Since it came out later you can assume it'll be better tuned to the 40nm process than Cypress so it may infact have better yields. The reason why they are all salvage parts is because Nvidia doesn't want to kill their own GTX 470 and 480 line like they did when they released the 8800GT. In any case you could say that the pricing it launched at is already a response to Southern Islands, thats a pretty good explanation in itself.

TBH Im not sure what Southern/Northern Islands will be. From what I think I know, it'll have a revamped 4P shader architecture and adjusted ROPs etc.

i have a viewsonic vg1930wm 19 inch. I think the native resolution is 1280 x 1024 (Native). However i think i will hook up to my 32 inch sammy 1080p via hdmi.

Ok, the HD 5770 will completely OWN your 1280 by 1024 monitor for ALL and ANY games to maximum settings.

Your 32" Sammy will work great, do you know that if you connect it via HDMI you can output sound through the TV?

I have to go, sorry but I think you have all the tools and links you need to make a great PC. You just have to decide on which now.