now the GTS 250 from galaxy that you posted is def worth the money, only ~3.6% increase in price but ~4% increase in performance so well worth it, esp if you fold...well at least for now but i think that'll change when GPU3 is out for F@H
Now look at the HD5750, going for
$145 right now. A 45% price increase over the GTS250 for a 4% performance increase. I hardly consider that worth it.
Now i can't agree more with you on the HD 57XX series....it blows my mind and makes no sense to me why ATI is retailing them for more than they're worth. However this is where ATI counters the GTS 250, your galaxy linked GTS 250 is $114, but the HD 4870 is
$124.
11.4% increase in price, but ~ 17% increase in performance worth it. Personally i'd grab the HD 4870 simply because the GTS 250 you linked is galaxy n i haven't owned a galaxy but it doesn't have a good rep, as its egg rating shows.
Moving onto the HD5770, and you have a card that sells for
$170. Of course the GTX260 216SP outperforms it and goes for
$145 new.
idk where you got $145 from but the cheapest GTX 260 i can find is
$164 from palit and galaxy. Now here i would argue that the HD 4870 is 124 and the GTX 260 is 40 bucks more, ~30% more in price, and performance is only 13% but we all know that the higher you go up in performance the price ratio get obscurred and abysmal. So i stop here as the GTX 260 c216 when compared to the HD 4870 has horrible price/perf but the HD 4890 is only ~6% better yet increases by $34.
Of course, like I've said before, another large issue is the supply problems that ATi has been having. While the HD5800 series is better than nVidia's higher end offering both in price and performance, they are nearly impossible to find. They go out of stock almost as fast as they come in. This allows nVidia to sell the much weaker GTX285 for $360.
So to summarize our discussion i think the ATI def wins the <$150 market but after that when you look at price increases and performance increases both ATI and Nvidia start to increase price much more than the performance increases so its a toss up and depends on ones budget after that imo. However i don't believe ATI is manufacturing any cards but the HD 4890 now in that family, so if it comes down to only having HD 5XXX series...ATI better lower prices cause the perf/price ration on their new mainstream gen just makes no sense.
so i agree with you on the higher end market of the mainstream segment but disagree with the 9800GT and GTS 250 being better offers statement.
!
it's very similar to AMD's real man use real core comment