people forget the overclock headroom
were talking 20-25% overclocks in reviews and sapphire is trying to bring out 40% overclocked versions to retail thats INSANE.
its price is justified a 580 3gb is still $500-520-550 ish depending where you look this beats it by 10-20% as is some titles as much as 60%, overclocking puts it in the 40-60% range at $550 ish with price gouging yes its $600 but anyone whos owned nvidia's high end has paid $600 per gpu as well.
AMD crowd im sorry to say needs to get over it pricing wise, nvidia looks to be 3-6 months out on Kepler AMD is the only game in town in the high end
with true DX11 titles like Metro 2033 crossfire scaling hits 100% and offers same performance as 2x 6990s in quadfire or 2x GTX 590s in SLI,
its performance depending on titles can be insane, or meh, but it seems the more DX11 the title is the better AMD gpu peforms
Examples being
Metro 2033
Shogun 2 Total War
to name a couple.
Bad Company 2 hits around 95% scaling at 1920x1200
Crysis 2 hits around 50% but at 2560 x 1600 its back up to 90% +
Battlefield 3 seems to hit around 90-95%
Alien vs Predator hits around 95%
Lost Planet 2 never a good game for AMD gpu hits around 70% from the looks
thats rather impressive really for beta drivers on a product not available at retail yet.
single card overclocked is on par or can beat out 6990 or GTX 590 both those gpus cost more, its priced where it should be,
AMD has a performance crown it can exploit for the first time in awhile
Think about 5800 series at release was great but AMD had to be first with DX11 and needed lower prices to take some market share and build up support for there products.
6000 was a refresh really nothing that great better tessellation tweaks essentially 4890
7000 series is the first time in a long time they ARE the GPU king of the hill again with a decent lead until Kepler, there going to do what they have to do as a business to capitalize on this situation.