Just listen to Kyle and quit reading this crap from fud, fart, and frap. Unless HE says the Top of the Line is coming out March/April, then June for that card it is.
When games are released on day 1, nvidia has a driver out. AMD, 1 to 2 weeks after. Has been since my first Radeon DDR to my last Radeon 1900XT to present day. All of you talking about HUGE performance increases 6 months after the 7970 has been released can stuff it. As like I said before, been the same line of Bullshit since the original Radeon. Besides that, why would you have to wait 4-6 months after release to get good drivers?? They have had working silicon in shop for 6 months or more before release. Remember the drivers for the Maxx Fury?? That was a hoot!
Its like there is a whole generation here now that didn't deal with ATI through the 2000's. Its no different. Should have been at rage 3D when a few of us got banned for asking Mr. Makedon about the hardware flaw in the T&L engine in the original Radeon 8500 64MB/128MB.(And other things they were do driver work arounds for.) No nasty comments, just really informative questions and answers THEY didn't want to hear. Banned and disposed of. That there is one of many reasons I do not put and ATI card in anyone of my family or friend computers to this day.
Another thing, the reason this things (7970) is over priced by a $100 is the BD cpu. IF you have one side of the company making money, a head start on the competition, and one side losing money, you have to try and make that up somewhere. (Basic business) ATI/AMD have a full quarter jump on Nvidia to make back some lost profit on the CPU divison through the GPU division. So instead of lets say a $100 profit on this card, its now $200. Go get it Lemmings!!
Apart form the Kyle related stuff you just posted an utter load of crap. I have used GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD recently and I had my fair share of day 1 game problems from both types. AMD release WHQL drivers every month and CAP updates a few times month and for the most part the AAA games get fixes very quickly if there are problems. They dropped the ball with Skyrim and Rage but they had Tahiti coming up so I gave them a by ball. Rage had serious problems with Nvidia SLI as well. If you think Nvidia drivers are all that then go and Google the Nvidia 196.75 driver problem. Nvidia even had to remove the drivers as they were blowing up GPUs, I seen this first hand because one of my SLI GTX 260's died when it's fan decided to stop while playing a game. I RMAd the card, and sold the replacement and my surviving GTX 260 due to Nvidia's fuck up, I really was that pissed with them over that. I bought a HD 5870 and it was a great card, then a couple of GTX 460's in SLI (nothing blew up this time), then a HD 6970 on release and now new a HD 7970.
http://hardocp.com/news/2010/03/05/nvidia_19675_drivers_kill_your_gpu
The reason HD 7970 is so expensive is because it beats the 3GB GTX 580 by a fair margin and the 3GB GTX 580 is priced higher than the HD 7970. AMD looked at the market for and seen the inlfated price of the 3GB GTX 580 and they priced the HD 7970 lower, but no, it's a fucking conspiracy I tell you, where's my tinfoil hat. Don't start all the conspiracy theory BS here, what was the conspiracy behind the prices for the GTX 480 ($499), or the GTX 280 ($650), or the GT8800 Ultra ($840)! , or the X1950XT ($499). I could list more but I think the point is made, they were all introduced at a very high or downright extortionate prices. Nvidia and AMD have almost always priced their undisputed topend single GPUs at premium or rip-off prices. Add to this the fact that retailers have always price gouged for the latest and greatest GPUs, always have, always will.
Sorry for the rant
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