As someone who is still using a HD4870 this card is looking mighty tasty. That being said. The price in Oz for this card is still above the 5970, which is quite odd...

Did I type Far Cry 3?

I wasn't suggesting that it be dropped. I was merely curious about why it seems to be universally kept in rotation...ie what it is that you like about it that keeps it in there. The testing is all relative so it does not matter. Just a curiosity... thats all

And that answers that

All this gpu releases make me think that AMD and Nvidia are in cahoots. If they weren't, Nvidia would be releasing a faster card given that they were given a good 1 year head start. With the benchmarks here and on other sites, it only looks like Nvidia is playing catch-up, which is nonsense in a business perspective (Nvidia is in it for the money of course).

Sure there are always fanboys and fangirls but c'mon, this is just ludicrous. I'd bet that they're testing the waters to see if they can sell the same old card performance even after a year and providing a so-called "competitor" released it to compete with AMD's 5970.

Leave it to the fanboys to suck up to these companies' psychological manipulation.

The metric should change a little in the near future. The GTX 580's drivers are going to add a good chunk of performance over the next few months. The card should also come down in price once the HD 6970/6950 launches. At the present time the GTX 580 only has the GTX 480 (who's failings are well known) and the HD 5870 2Gb (excessively expensive) as "competition" in the single card arena- I don't count the HD 5970 since it seems to be largely disappearing from shelves.
On other hand GTX 460 prices I think may remain fairly static. Their competition is already in the channel (HD 6850/6870), and the GTX 560 I doubt will be hurried to replace it while 460 stock exists unless AMD start squeezing prices or going nuts with the factory overclock cards. HD 6870 supply at the moment seems a little constrained given the available models which should ensure no price cuts there.

I think it reasonable to assume performance/$ should be much closer once the HD 6970/6950 launch in December.

"can't believe we have this many readers that own the GTX 465, yesterday there were a few and here it goes again. Unfortunately that card was never a good buy "

Hey to be fair, it seemed like a good buy at the time until you actually get it home lol. I admit, it runs hotter than and louder than it's necessary. But some are lucky to unlock them to a GTX470. Unfortunately for me it's just a regular 465, but I did buy it only for $180 back when it came out. If I were to turn back time I'd have a 460 or 470 right now.

Anyone looking to purchase this card should have just purchased a 5970 last year and would have enjoyed this type of performance for a whole year.

...and would have paid $US100+ more for the privilege ($599 msrp) since AMD realised that selling two HD 5870's returned better profits that one HD 5970.

Snapshot from November 2009...
as of November 30, prices on Diamond's Radeon HD 5970 sit at $600; most other 5970s range from $625 to $679.

Of course you could also compare the relative PPD and PPD/watt for folding of both cards too, or maybe the fact that programmers would buy the GTX 580 (and the 480 before it) for their double precision + ECC memory + CUDA capabilities.

Lastly, you could also compare said HD 5970 with Crossfired HD 5850's -cheaper, better resale value, higher overclock and better overall reliability.

Of course none of this matters to your average garden variety troll. See you on the next drive-by:wave:

I'm waiting for my 580's through evga upgrade program as we speak.

The review was nice and clean. Unless I have a ton of time I usually only read the intro, specs, 2-3 game charts and the conclusion. Nice job once again.

"Anyone looking to purchase this card should have just purchased a 5970 last year and would have enjoyed this type of performance for a whole year. "

Righhhttt... Because the 5970 is the epitome of value and everyone can afford one /s