We see AMD will launch ahead of Nvidia in 2012, one can argue , why shouldn't a potential buyer of a 500 dollar video card,, not wait to see what the competition has to offer ?
Well, as someone who buys these $500 cards, I look on the historical performance disparity for the preceding two nodes; Nvidia being about 10-20% faster than AMD in the single-gpu bracket. I expect to see the same on this node.
The 480 was such a let down for many, particularly 5870 owners, because it came six months late and was on average 15% faster than 5870. Considering the six additional months of development it took to get it, it didn't impress. 5870 owners were happy because they already had six months of enjoyment out of the new level of performance the 5870 brought that they didn't spend waiting using old tech 55nm performance for what was a small increment of performance over their card.
It's sort of like upgrading from a 480 to a 580, you'd have to try to notice the difference in gameplay, or run benchmarks to compare.
For high resolution users the 480 was good to see because of the 1.5GB of VRAM seeing as 2GB 5870s were nowhere to be found at the time. AMD made a mistake not releasing the 5870 with more than 1GB of VRAM. This is moot now though with the huge, arguably excessive, VRAM count seen on modern cards. The 7970 has 3GB of VRAM!! Insane!
Five days from now many of the people buying the 7970 will be going in to it expecting the same. Why wait six months for 15% more performance when I can have a 7970 now ? Some will wait for sure, the true 'fanboys', who just only buy nvidia regardless of performance numbers, price comparisons etc. they won't buy anything else. There were certainly people who did wait on the 480 from this demographic. There were also people who waited on the 480 expecting something special and then got slapped down with somewhat of a turd. They may not be inclined to sit on their hands and wait again.
Myself, I am looking to 'downgrade' from three cards. I want a dual-card setup that is 20-30% faster than my current setup. Having crunched the numbers, a pair of 1300+ core clocked 7970s in Crossfire will deliver that. So I figure I will be going AMD this time out, pretty confident we will see 1300core custom 7970s like the Sapphire Atomic RX 7970 or MSI Lightning 7970 before we see nvidia's flagship release later this year. Suits me fine as I prefer AMD.
I'll buy either, but prefer AMD over nvidia. Sort of my point, there are more buyers that will buy whatever is available and performs than care about the brand name. Why wait 6 months for 15% when you have a kickass card here now. :thumbsup:
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