And price. At the moment Nvidia are simply better value and who would have thought that a yr ago? ATI undercut Nvidia to gain market share, and not just for the benefit of the customer. Now they have their market share prices remain high.
The only card which still retains any sort of value in the 5 series is the HD5850, but the 460 is almost on par. To get a decent reference hd5850 you are looking at 210, the cheapo non reference designs are not worth it,
The difference is, the 5850 isn't being priced to sell out, the 470gtx is EOL and is priced to clear all stock so the 475gtx can launch, even then its basically 5850 performance for a little more(not much these days). AMD make a slim profit on a 5850, Nvidia is making a catastrophic loss on a 470gtx at £220, so AMD should slash prices, for no reason, because for a month or two the 470gtx will be sold at a massive loss?
The 5850 price isn't high, the 40nm process price is high, the 470gtx needs to be well over £300 to make ANY profit at all, thats due to neligence and poor design by Nvidia.
If Nvidia stand a chance of not being bankrupt in the future they HAVE TO, with literally no question about it, make a small core gpu, similar to AMD, this will require a VERY different shader being employed, efficient and small and INCREDIBLY hard to program for, so when Nvidia(if they bother) make a vastly more complex shader to make a vastly smaller and more profitable core, expect their drivers to instantly become useless, slow, buggy as hell and trying to get performance out of a complex shader rather than a basic and easy to program for shader.
In a month or more Nvidia will probably have a 475gtx out, basically on par with a 470gtx, and my opinion is they'll price it around £240-250, and it will be worse value than a 5850.
A month after that a 6850 will be out, my guess would be 30-40% faster than a 5850, for around the same price as a current 5850. At which point AMD will be EVEN better value.
AMD have been better value for all but a month in the past 2 years, and this is ONLY because Nvidia are EOL'ing a product, and thats incredibly common in every industry in the world, its not competitive, Nvidia lose cash for every 470gtx sold at that price, but its better to lose £100 now, than have to sell them for an extra £50 loss when the 475gtx launches.
I've also repeatedly commented on the 470gtx being a great value card, for now, for odd reasons, its a good choice for end users, but for Nvidia, its the worst card they sell making the biggest loss and most certainly and unquestionably doesn't indicated that Nvidia are better value in any way than AMD.
Just remember, looking at high res the 460gtx is 30% slower than a 5850, yet has a die size over 10% bigger, costs 15% less, and barely makes a profit at all, end user = great, Nvidia = humoungous fail.
