550$? I'll wait for 7950.

zarx said: JEMC said: Snesboy said: JEMC said: Nice card, and a very good improvement over the HD6970, between 30-40% faster! Not bad at all. Unfortunately the improvements are not as impressive if we compare it with the GTX 580, and then there is the price, $549! I'll wait for the HD7950 with its dual BIOS "Retailers will surely tack on an early-adopter premium, but if they somehow miraculously release at their MSRP, the GTX 580 is going to need a price drop before long. Of course, NVIDIA is supposed to release its new Kepler architecture in 2012. AMD has beat them to the punch, and upped the ante. In some areas, even an overclocked GTX 580 can’t match the new HD 7970 beast at stock. 2012 just got very interesting for GPUs. AMD has taken back the hill. It’s your move NVIDIA." From Overclockers.com I think I'll wait for the 7750 or 7770 Oh, it is a very good card, but given that it's done on a new fab process, the first 28nm, some were expecting a revolution. And it's not. It's a solid upgrade for anyone with an HD5xxx/lower HD6xxx card or Nvidia equivalent but for the enthusiasts that have a GTX580 / HD69xx or even a Xfire/SLI  setup, the gains aren't that big to justify the price tag. The price, and the noise (it seems to be a bit noisy, but given the good temps you could lower the fan speed or wait for a 3rd party custom cooler), are the only cons for an excellent card. And if rumors are true (and I'm playing devil's advocate here) the GTX 780 is going to something revolutionary. yea the price is a tad high, they are probably trying to turn a profit off it as fast as possible. AMD needs it ATM especially after the dissapointing Bulldozer launch. They have to make hay while the sun shines (before kepler launches) and the 28nm has been an expensive transition mard with delays (which delayed both AMD and Nvidia) so they will probably sell out what they can make anyway. And I would never trust GPU rumours (metro last night lol) TBH http://www.guru3d.com/news/amd-hd-7970-performance-leaks/ The 680 will likely out perform 7970 by ~20% use more power than a 580 and launch at $599

I know that rumors usually are PR propaganda to create hype for an upcoming product or to shadow the launch of a competitors product. Never trust them, but somehow I have fun am entertained with them.

I think the 6 or 7xx will be faster than  ~20% given the differences this gen but, more power than a 580 would be a tad too much. You'd need a 1000W PSU for a system with a single GPU card! About price, given the recent launches of Nvidia and the launch price of the 580, IF the card is as fast as they want, they will charge more than $600.

@Slimebeast_ As you say, you can get the HD6950 (you can try to flash the BIOS and OC'ed it to have a 6970), or you can wait and get an HD7870/7850 and do X-fire. With the ZeroCore thingy, in X-fire the slave card uses less than 3W when you are not gaming. Quite a feat!

Also, CrossFire review with the 7970 : hardwareheaven. Excellent in Battlefield 3, rubish in Skyrim.

I do like that AMD is releasing this early as it will lower the price of the GTX580. If they go down to 300-350 early next year, I may add a 3rd one...

Not sure its needed though as I don't do 3D gaming anymore and 3 monitors run flawless with 2 GTX580s.

will this be avail for imac 2012? :D

One also has to remember that since this is new tech, 28nm and new architecture, drivers currently aren't optimised, not even close i would think. So with that in mind it will only get faster.

Also about price, doesn't the 3gb version of 580 also cost 550?

This. It's still early days and we won't know full performance until the drivers have been optimised.

Skyrim actually isn't that taxing on the hardware, I have a HD6950 and I run erveything on Ultra with FFAA Post Process Injector without so much as a stutter. The visuals are greatly improved and I still have some leverage with my GPU.

Gothic 3 with heavy mods however, is another story...

I can't do Crossfire though because of microstuttering. For a long time I was planning to get two 6950s but then I read about microstuttering and I think that would annoy me greatly.

What? Why don't you do 3D gaming anymore??

What is Post Process Injector?

I know Skyrim vanilla version is relativley mild on hardware but like you said, even an old game like Gofic 3 can become very demanding with heavy modding.