No...
BUT - there will almost certainly be plenty of leaks relating to performance in various benchmarks.
Also, the mid-range cards will have been released already, so given that you will know the specs of the high end cards with a fair degree of certainty, and will know the 'per-shader-core' performance increase from the reviews of the mid-range cards, you will already have a fairly good idea of performance.
It's rare that there any any really big surprises by launch day...
I dunno, the last "big" launch I saw involved a card made with wood screws, that was pretty surprising
As for launch, the rumour is 12th Oct for launch, 25th for supply.
I've never ONCE had a go at Nvidia, or AMD, or Intel, or, ATi(when they were different) or anyone else for a paper launch, its one of those "have to find something to ***** about" things people do.
Information is better than no information, every time, no exceptions(ok one, if AFTER its happened you would prefer your friend didn't let on it was a dude, the ONLY exception).
Paper launch pretending to be a hard launch or giving inaccurate dates is annoying for sure, but even then you know what the card is about in general.
Personally I prefer a paper launch, cards can only be ready at X time, if they can tell you what the card is basically any time between now, and X, it doesn't change X.
But lets be honest, we all enjoy speculating, and when you're making educated guesses and talking about architecture and what could improve performance, its just interesting discussions anyway.
If all the companies paper launched too early, think of all the crazy rumours we'd miss out on
