I am always an Underdog cheer person. Also my brand of choice is ATI always has been.
So I would be really surprised if Femi doesn't beat ATI's offerings. Not because that the 5800 series is a bad card because it isn't. It's just because Nvidia has had a little bit longer to work on it. Nvidia had a chance to see what ATI was making.. and then will have a chance to counter it.
Just like when the 6800 series will release. By that time ATI will have a chance to see femi in all of it's glory and then counter.
I think because both companies have grown so large and are capable of such high performance..... I don't think we will ever see a clear winner again. Like for example the 2900XT vs. the 8800GTX. Also because of that match up (8800 vs. 2900XT) that took Ati awhile to recover from. So remember they have been fighting back almost from a postion of being a generation behind Nvidia.
Unless something drastically changes I think it would just be wise to pick a card manufacturer and just stick with them. Unless you are one of those people that needs the absolute best at all times....(like most of us are) the odds are if your manufacturer doesn't have the feature you want and the other card does. Well then just wait till your manufacturers next generation card because then I am sure that feature will be on it!
Now with that said I think Femi will be a very powerful computing card. I think it will easily out compute.... the pants off of the 5800 series. But at the same time I wonder about it's gaming performance.
From what I have read and I might be wrong.... but it might just be marginally better in gaming performance if not on par as for as the 5800 series goes.
Nvidia looks like they are planning on taking their company a different way than ATI. It looks like they want to brake more into the computing area. While ATI doesn't really have a need for that. ATI has AMD and that is what they take care of. So ATI looks to me like they are just consternating more on the gaming aspect of video cards.
Hey I could be wrong about all of this but it sure is fun to speculate!!!
Well I do not know the only thing that can happen is the fermi hit the 5850 and 5770 in 5970 .. now she will not get
I don't think though.... that in anyway on god's green earth though that a mid range Femi will beat out a 5970. A 5850 almost definitely. Possibly a 5870 and I do say only Possibly! But that's only if what they are releasing is a a equivalent of the 260GTX = 360GTX. But if they are releasing like a 350 GTS I believe you could see a 5850 performance.
The performance scale you will probably see will be very similar to last gen.
Top Dog.....