I'm surprised it performs so closely with the 5870 yet cooler running and doesn't demand so much from your power supply. I think this is my next card come Christmas time, unless Nvidia releases some details about their next generation GPU's along with expected prices before then.

I've read rumors that we will not see any Nvidia cards for sale until next year...ouch, but I'm betting they release before Christmas. Missing the holiday buying season would be a real stupid move for Nvidia.

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It isn't a matter of stupid. It's a matter of what they can do. If they can do it, we know they will, but if they can't, well, that's a problem.

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As great as these cards are, my system only supports low-profile cards since it's a HTPC. Bring on the Radeon HD 5650 & 5670!!!!

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Well, you meant YOUR HTPC case. Not all HTPCs are limited to half-cards. Although, I thik that these fan blower cooling solutions are horrible for HTPC applications with their horrible whine. It may be awhile until aftermarket solutions are out for this new line.

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...thats what he said.

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interesting results, can't wait to see how gt300 will compare

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My guess is - GT300 wont compare to 5850 or 5870.
It will compare with the 5870X2 and be in the price bracket. (Too much for most of us.)

When the GT300 eventually gets released that is.... Then a few months later again nvidia will bring out the scaled down versions in the same price brackets as the 5850/5870 that will probably compete pretty well.

Only question is - can you wait?
You could wait for the 6870 as well:P



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The GT300 will need 512bit gddr5 to make memory faster than GT200 and it will hawe even more masive GPGPU bloat than last gen. So in folding it will be surely much faster but in graphic it will cost much more for the same(at least for nvidia depending how close they want to bring it to radeon 5k). And of course they can sell the same gt300 in tesla cards for several thousand(like they did with gt200).
The 5850 price with disabled units is still win for ati or else they wouldnt sell the defect gpu at all.

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GDDR5 provides double the bandwidth of CGDDR3. No need for 512bit memory bus. This was covered in another story on the front of this site.

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Ya it already sounds like the 5870X2 and 5850X2 are being positioned in the media to compete with just a single GT300 with rumors of $500 price points. I think the combination of poor scaling compared to RV770/RV790 in addition to some of the 5850/5870 CF scaling problems seen in today's review are major contributing factors. Really makes you wonder how much of these scaling issues are driver problems, CPU/platform limitations, or RV870 design limitiations.

My best guess for GT300 pricing will be:

$500-$550 for a GTX 380 (full GT300 die) including OC variants
$380-$420 for a GTX 360 (cut down GT300) including OC variants
$250 and lower GTX 285 followed by GT210 40nm GT200 refresh with DX10.1

So you'd have the 5870X2 competing with GTX 380 in the $500-600 range. Maybe the 5850X2 in the $400-$500 range competing with the GTX 360. 5870 already looks poised for a price cut given X2 price leaks, maybe they introduce a 2GB part and keep it at the $380 range and drop the 1GB part. Then at some point I'd expect Nvidia to roll out their GT300 GX2 part as needed somewhere in the $650-700+ range.....

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