old news, repost thread.
The articles say dual -gpu, not dual core, and its just a new X2 card. the current cards have 800 shaders a core, 1600 total, the new ones are 1000 per core, 2000 per card, 25% bump, nothing magical or particularly difficult to see how much faster it will be. Its a die shrink with most likely a few optimisations, and a few more shaders, in the best case situation it will have 25% more shader power(though clocks will likely be higher on all existing shaders too remember, so call it 35-45% faster) and worst case scenario it will only be 5-10% faster. remember sometimes it can use all the shaders, sometimes only around 1/5th or so of them are getting used, generally a mix inbetween.
People are so ridiculous about drivers, 2-3 years without a significant problem, I've not bothered with the 8.8's yet, as i operate on a need to do basis. if something doesn't work I'll try a new driver. Most ATi users would be 100% fine on an older set and if they didn't try the new ones wouldn't have an issue. I can't even say if its a user side problem or some bug in these drivers or not as I haven't tried them. But you don't HAVE to upgrade to new drivers just because they are there, if they aren't working for you, go back to the last ones that did, who the hell cares.
if i look over the last 3 years of ATi drivers i've had no issues, at all. if i look at Nvidia over the same time I cant' say that, no one can, their vista drivers for a year were a complete joke. They have far more than 1 bad set a year. if they had one more bad set, or one more good set, it doesn't suddenly change how good their drivers are in general or how good their team is. likewise one bad ATi set(if its bad, like i said i haven't tried it) doesn't mean their drivers are suddenly all crap all the time for all eternity.
