Obviously i was not not lucky enough to be born in a more civilized country like you (in the god forsaken place where i live 7950's are at least $500-$600 and the ones that actually come with a game are even higher) otherwise i wouldnt bitching around about it.
even this shows them equal.
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASUS/ARES_II/images/perfrel.gif
Yeah, that is the graph I posted originally, and he responded with "OMG! Relative performance is stoopid! Look at these cherry picked game numbers, they proves HD7970 is better!"
The 7970 basic version is slower than the GTX680. However the clocks are so differentiated it hurts. Nvidia (in the past few years) has always released gfx cards clocked slower than ATI. But due to their monolithic die size and transistor counts, tended to perform quite a bit better than ATI.
Don't forget that, in the past, nVidia used hot clocks while AMD stuck with linking the core and shader clock speeds 1:1. So while nVidia's card's cores were clocked lower than AMD, often times their shaders, which do all the real grunt work, were clocked at least double the cores. So with the GTX580 and HD6970, for example, the HD6970 was clocked at 880MHz while the GTX580 was
only clocked at 772MHz. However, the GTX580's shaders ran at 1544MHz. That was a big part of where nVidia got their performance from.
This time AMD released the 7970 with clocks that were far too conservative. Nvidia (more than likely) made great use of their usual, late to the table, card by tweaking the clocks skyward. Why else are they voltage locked? Adaptive V-sync and the massive clocks are more than likely reaching their boards power limits.
AMD react with their GHz edition cards (lame quite frankly). Now the 7970 clocked at the boost speeds of the 680 does tend to win on most occasions. But on Nvidia's side is a 'generally' better driver team. If AMD piled their resources into driver development and created better gaming development strategies (like Nvidia does) you;d probably see the 7970 cards humping all over the 680.
Actually, I think nVidia was very ready with the card, but waited for AMD to make the move so they would know what they had to compete against. The weak showing by AMD this round is why nVidia ended up releasing what they planned to be a mid-range card as the actual high end card. They didn't need to release GK110 so they held it back to retaliate against whatever AMD had planned next. The lame step of simply boosting clock speeds meant nVidia didn't really need to retaliate.
The 7970 is a much more powerful card than the 680 but it is far less refined. For a change Nvidia have the sleek purring kitten and AMD has the brute growler. A card is only as good as it's hardware AND software and AMD have the hardware battle won for now but not the software one.
However, if the GTX Titan is not a myth then it will more than likely piss over the 7970. But, given the rumours it will only be for show. It will be like the Ares 2 7970 card.
I wouldn't even say AMD has the better hardware right now because GK110 is a much more powerful card hardware wise, but nVidia hasn't had a need to release it with the HD7970 and the GTX680 being so close in performance and price.
I doubt Titan will just be for show. Normally cards that are just for show are super expensive to produce. However, given the specs of GK110, it won't be any more expensive to produce than an HD7970.
Also, to add to what many sensible people have said, there is no need for new gfx cards this year. The 680 and the 7970 are excellent cards. Driver tweaking will keep them well up to speed with all the new games.
It is a sign of confidence to not rush out a new product - not weakness. And the Titan is simply a technology argument from Nvidia (probably a very bloody good one too).
Both AMD and Nvidia have done enough with graphics recently. They need to sit back and work on other areas now, software, mobile, coding assistance. I'd much rather keep a card that can work on new games because they're coded better than have to buy new cards because of substandard coding.
I find playing BF3 at 2560x1440 with ALL FX maxed out with 80-100+ fps is more than enough on two 7970's. Why the hell do i want more powerful cards?
Though I might downgrade to Titan......
I have to agree, I think the market is getting tired of the accelerated product releases.
The two free games I got with the card are icing on the cake. AMD makes good products. Taking time to fine tune their drivers and let their gpu's mature is fine with me. Espically with the sweet game bundless AMD is giving out. Far Cry 3 and now Tomb Raider. 
