I believe Nvidia and AMD are gonna give us a mediocre 28nm launch and a better refresh this time.
40% now 30% in 10 months. That way they get our money twice. :sneaky:
It makes sense...
how many people went from a gtx470/gtx480 to a gtx570/580 and same for AMD 5850 to 6950 was not a upgrade and either was a 5870 to 6970?
Not very many, at least not the smart ones.
nVidia and AMD both struggled to give us any improvement this gen. I think for 2 different reasons. I think Cypress was a tough act to follow, considering AMD's small chip philosophy, on the same process. The chip just worked perfectly performance, efficiency, and size. Tessellation and crossfire performance were it's only weaknesses. That's really all they improved upon with Cayman. Considering the state of gaming for Cypress' time, it wasn't that much of a weakness. In order to increase performance though they had to make a bigger and less efficient chip. No 32nm stifled AMD a lot, IMO.
nVidia was able to finally give us a fully functioning Fermi. If they had made that originally, and on time, they would have hit it out of the park. AMD had planned on the 5970 to compete with the equivalent of the 580, and they would have needed it. Being a dual chip card though it wouldn't have competed well. They would have been able to claim the fastest single card, but that would be it, and I don't think it would have been enough to truly compete. The 580 is really what should have been the GTX-385, if all had gone well.
I think 28nm will be huge. I don't think either company can afford to give us half baked designs. They have to worry that the other is going to go all out. If one company pushes it to the max, say 70%-100% performance improvement, and the other tries to schlock in with 40%, they risk losing too much.