Are the GT200 and R700 new gpu's or not?
Well the basic designs aren't. The actual gpu's are new ofcourse.
History:
R300 => R420 => R520
ATI used the basic R300 design from august 2002 until R600 was released (may 2007 but should have been on the market 6 months earlier without delay).
NV40 => G70
nVidia used NV40 technology from april 2004 until november 2006.
So it's quiet common to use certain technology for a couple generations. This will be even more profound with current generation of gpu's because of the increased complexity of unified shaders.
It takes 2 to 3 years to design a gpu like the R300, NV40, R600 or G80. After that you get the usual updates. Even a process shrink, let's say 65nm to 45nm, takes almost a year without even touching the design. These companies manage to hide this time because they have multiple design teams working in parallel.
The same thing happens with cpu's. Look at K8 and K10. Look at Conroe and Penryn.
Expect really new architectures from ATI and nVidia somewhere in 2009, maybe even later and they will be DX11.
Exactly! People seem to forget that the G80 was revolutionary in it's architecture. Then comes along the G92 and they are up in arms that it's not AS revolutionary as the G80. Well wth did they expect, it was only one year later.
For the majority of games on the market, a single top end (and very affordable now) Nvidia card, will lay waste. Why must we see the introduction of a brand new architecture? So we can load up Fraps and jerk-off to the sight of a solid 150fps 24/7?
Everything Nvidia(and in some ways, ATi) has done since the G80, has been purposeful it seems - The GT, the new GTS, the 9800 series - They were simply tuning, tweaking and slight upgrading their product line up, to ensure two things : Market dominance, and 'keeping with the times/a.k.a. keeping their generic consumer base.'
They accomplished both with ease. Now nearly two years after G80, we see a new card to emerge that's apparently going to be fairly impressive. Even if it's not a new architecture,
W H O C A R E S !?!?!?