[Horrux]

Originally Posted by arnoo1

Who cares about power usage,
People who buy high end gpu's don't care about power usage, most hardware junkies get water blocks or aftermarket coolers

I know i can't wait and at the end of this year a will grap one, i don't care about price, my gtx275 is getting old as shit

Actually, if you had to change your PSU in order to accommodate your new videocard, I bet you would care. A lot.

Originally Posted by cadaveca

I pay $0.15/kWh. That means it cost me near $36/month for a 300W GPU, if it ran 24/7. My power bill for January was $437.30. You bet performance/watt matters, because over 12 months, that's $432 to buy Mcdonalds with. I'll take that cheque, please, as it's easy enough for me personally to make it worthwhile. For the average user, it still might buy that McDonalds. I can't be bothered to guess at how long a GPU is at full load, on average...depends on the app and such, but it's be interesting to get a real number.

You are forgetting that for 7-8 months of the year at least, you are heating your house, and the power used by your GPU is power you're not using to heat your house, so remove at least half of what you calculated. Moreover, you likely NEED it to run a lot less than 24/7... Say 4 hours a day to be reasonable, remove 5/6th of that... A more realistic figure for that $432 thus becomes $36 a year. Well, you can buy one game. With the power your whole GPU uses. But say the difference in power consumption between competing GPUs is a whopping 20%.... Then your $36 a year becomes $7.20. Barely enough for a taste of the shit they serve at McDonalds.

Originally Posted by HD64G

You simply forget that 6990 did beat 590. So, Fermi was beaten in the end. Somehow, I suspect the same thing is going to happen again this time...

It's almost guaranteed it will, given that AMD can pack higher performance in the power budget of a single card, due to their higher performance per watt. This is another reason why power consumption DOES matter. A LOT.

Originally Posted by NdMk2o1o

If some rumours and slides are to believed Keplar will have 100% increase in performance over the 5** series for the respectable replacements, I seriously hope this is true as I would buy double the performance of an 570 for the same price, nevermind TWIMTBP, TWTUTBM = the way they used to be made :P

Not gonna happen. The engineers are really making the best they can out of the current tech. Given that, there is no way you can expect anything close to 100% increase in performance. In the early days of a technology, engineers still learn new tricks and can squeeze huge performance gains from their chips. Take for example the 486DX2 VS 486. Pretty much double the performance. But the difference between a 2600k and a 2700k? A gain of 2.9%. Yay. But that's what a new CPU model gives you today. Same with GPUs. 25% to 33% between generations is bound to become more the norm than the exception, and soon progress will get closer to 25%, then 20%... And so on.

Originally Posted by the54thvoid

Really?

In the summary page (7970 xfire review), the 590 beats the 6990 at every resolution. Here's the 2560 res summary.

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/HD_79...rfrel_2560.gif

I'm only putting this in to stop blatant mistruths. Lots of people give the 590 a hard time but it runs cooler and quieter by most accounts and the very own TPU round up for the link above puts 590 as better for every resolution. But as always, it's really game dependant.

I'm pissed NV is holding back info on Kepler as I'm looking to upgrade but it's so close I need to wait to see how Kepler performs as I'm keen to see a 7970 price drop. Unless Kepler is way better (doubt it).

If Kepler bombs, I'm buying 2 7970's just as a capitalist reaction!!

Again using "All resolutions"... How about comparing them at 1080p or 1920x1200 or 2560xwhatever? You think people are getting $750 video cards to play at 1024x768?

Originally Posted by xenocide

I don't think anyone can really refute that Nvidia will offer more powerful cards, they have pretty reliably, but the real question is both cost and relative performance. If you could pay $1000 for a 680 that has 30-40% higher performance than an HD7970, you're not exactly compelled to buy it. If Nvidia can match AMD at price points and offer much higher performance they will crush the competition.

I have high hopes for Kepler and plan on getting a 6xx series GPU to give Nvidia a shot since the last time I had an Nvidia card was a 7900GS a few years back. Nvidia is just trying to keep people in anticipation of their new line, but given the problems with the 7xxx series and drivers I've seen around, I don't think they really have much to worry about.

Of course nV will release cards at prices that put AMD's products to shame. That's because AMD is milking its business the way they should. Once Kepler is actually available, AMD will adjust its pricing to compete. Yes, that should mean price reductions...