i thought ati have always gone for the X2 suffix on their dual cards, so it would be strange for them to do that. They are planning some more chips in the next few months though, so these could always be the 'make sure nvidia really can't fight back' cards that will come when the gtx380 comes out, probably with more shaders or something (after all, they know their architecture very well, so they can probably find a way to do that, whereas nvidia are on a new architecture, so will either do extremely, amazingly well [at a huge cost, due to them really struggling with the 40nm transition] or will be totally hamstrung by it).
It will be interesting to see how this generation will span out, since ati really do have the foothold now, hd5870/50's are selling like hot cakes, with the 5770/50's bound to sell by the bucket loads to users upgrading to windows 7, due to them being around the £80-100 mark. I really am struggling to see how nvidia will fight back. If they had the power to topple the hd5870 they would not be quiet about it, which company would just stand by letting their direct rival raking in the money? and nvidia generally take a long time to roll out their mid range (there, in fact, was hardly a gt200 mid range whatsoever, they were mostly just 8 series double renames), which really can't be another rename job, ati's products just beat them too badly, and they NEED the dx11. So ati will gain huge market share, and nvidia will then have to dent it with a tiny set of chips aimed at 1% of the market. So maybe this will be the first ati generation since before the radeon hd's, it has been a long time coming.
However, nvidia won't succumb to less than 30% market share, since they do have the intel vibe about them, which means 'we're always better because our name is everywhere regardless of performance*' so they will always sell to the masses quite well, eevn if their next gen does suck.
Returning to topic, the 5890 will just be a simple clock boost though, judging by ati's naming schemes of the last gen.
*intel do own at the moment in the processor arena though, there is no dispute there. But whenever amd did lead, intel still sold better. I'm hoping a major success for amd in the gpu arena will help kickstart their processors, it is good to see them totally redesigning though for a new chip in late 2010/2011, since the phenoms are just blatantly outclassed by i7 [although i was surprised to see how little the i5's beat them by, if at all]. Not that i'm an amd purist of course, but if they were on equal terms, the i7 would have cost £200 with the mobo after 3-6 months, instead of costing £350 after 12, so always root for the underdog!
EDIT: it seems that the 5900's will be hemlock's which seems strange to me, but i suppose it helps consumers, since they'll see the gtx395 (eventually, maybe, and it also serves as a fully functional central heating unit) and a hd radeon 5970, and someone can get the vague idea that they're on equal terms (although, tbh if someone buys a hd5970 without knowing what they are buying properly, they either have been confused by sales people [although sales people generally = nvidia] &\or will likely 'splode their power supply when they get back home). Still, maybe they'll eventually roll out a 5990
, i think only if next games will be multithread you can think to an upgrade
