Having a game run 60 fps makes a huge difference...

I'm ok with medium-high visual detail and no aa (it still looks better than PS360 versions of the game most of the time) however having a game run 60 fps makes it so much better than console versions which always tend to be locked at 30.

Well, we meant the visual quality. Resolution, more effects, amount of AA, AF etc. That it doesn't add as much as you'd think (or at least not much as your typical PC fanboy claims).

About framerate. Since you can't pan and turn the camera very quickly in console games it's usually smooth enough with 30fps. If you could turn it quickly like you do with a mouse on the PC then it would stutter too much, yeah.

But the beauty about console games is that they usually manage to have the framerate locked like you say. And a locked 30 fps feels in my opinion smoother than a fluctuating average 45 fps on my PC. 

So all and all, you really need a lot of that extra horsepower on PCs for it to show.

Charlie had it professionally measured to a tenth of a mm on a side.

And it is not yielding better, since it doesn't use double-vias to compensate for 40nm's leakage. Even Anandtech agrees with Charlie that Nvidia should have done that.

SI will be tweaked Evergreen shaders with a new frontend that will hugely increase efficiency. Notice how poor the 3870 -> 4870 -> 5870 scaling was with shader count. Nowhere near 5x, more like 3x. SI will fix some of that.

Nvidia will release a full GF104 or dual GF104 when they run out of GF100 supply in a few months. Because they only ever produced a limited number of wafers and are working through packaging them.

But how do you know it doesn't have double vias? Im certain that the RV740 didn't have them and yet lessons learnt were applied to Evergreen which featured them. From what I am aware, (correct me if im wrong) as I have been following this topic as well is that Charlies sources were off on their measurements because I saw a cut down GT 460 die measured to roughly 330mm^2 using accurate instruments. The rough part comes from the fact that the die package was damaged slightly when they cut the heat spreader. However this is relatively inconsequential.

I do have to agree that Southern Islands could be quite powerful. Especially as they can take advantage of faster and larger 2Gbit GDDR5 32bit wide ram chips. This would solve their bandwidth and especially frame buffer issues whilst at the same time allow them to take advantage of better shader utilization and front end architecture.

I also have to agree that they are only really producing Fermi chips for the professional market. Its pretty much the same deal as the EOL of their last range of high end cards as well.

We're going to have to disagree about Charlie. Personally I believe him, but what ultimately matter is i) are Nvidia's products good value for money? and ii) Are they making enough profit on them to be viable as a company?

In the case of i), even Charlie admits the GTX 460 is a good product.
In the case of ii), I currently believe Charlie that Nvidia will not survive long in the post Llano/SB era as their core business is poorly managed and their other businesses (chipset, Ion, Tegra, Tesla) are not expanding.

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Is this your source: http://image163.poco.cn/mypoco/myphoto/20100731/19/5519975820100731193928021.png

If so, that wasn't measured directly but instead the person who took the photo and person who measured the die only from the photo were different people. Not as accurate as getting a laser out on a real die.

Is Charlie that awesome guy who broke off from Anandtech and hates Nvidia?

Broke off from the Inquirer; yes.

You either believe him absolutely or think he's an AMD shill on a mission to destroy Nvidia. There's no middle ground.

If you ignore his articles (which are inflammatory and sensationalist to get views, though true) and read his forum posts on his website, he comes across reasonable and intelligent guy who is trying to find the truth and has the sources to do it. He doesn't hate Nvidia, he thinks they have good engineers obstructed by bad management and underhanded marketers.

Oh yeah it was The Inq.

He predicted that Fermi would suck, maybe slightly overexaggerated it but still he was the main source to kill the Fermi hype at least here in Sweden.

So what are your and Squill's conclusions about Southern Island (I take it that's gonna be the 6000-series ATI this Fall?)? Will it increase 65% performance compared to last gen as usual?

The information we do have (codename, tapeout date, launch date, architecture and performance estimate) is ALL from Charlie. So if he's right, then a substantial increase of 20-30% in IPC or more if they add more shaders. If he's wrong, no one knows.

Don't expect the earth because it's the same 40nm node as Evergreen, so they can't double the shader count like usual (Well, there was RV770, but that was exceptional).

The important thing about SI will be the price drops. AMD is selling a 166mm^2 chip (HD57xx) for a higher average price than they sold a 250mm^2 chip (HD48xx) last generation. They could easily afford to sell the 5770 at half the price. So if supply improves, even if SI is a modest improvement then prices for X level of performance should fall by ~$100 on the high end.

So only 20-30% performance increase plus any that would come from increase in clockspeed? But there won't even be any higher clocks because it's the same 40nm?

That sux man.

What happens to Moore's law then. They're lagging behind.

Oh well, the main thing for me is that they remain ahead of Nvidia and stay profitable.