the price was just a wild stab in the dark, got no idea how much 4890s are these days, sure you can find some good deals if you have a good look around. true the driver support can be testing at times, running older 10.4 drivers personally but not getting any noticable crossfire issues like micro-stuttering or anything such as that, hell only problem i get is insane amounts of heat (101*C before playing starcraft II but i think might have clogged heatsink). guess the problem remains for me personally, is the GTX 480 really £100 better and does DX11 mean anything? experiences with DX10 tell me to ignore DX11 for the most part and i can't see why without needing DX11 the GTX 480 is the better option? pretty sure you could find 4890s second hand for fair bit less than retail price and that makes the decision even more difficult to justify. hell i personally got this 4870X2 for £130, perfect condition, so in a perfect world lets say one could get another for same price. £260 for 4870X2 crossfire setup which sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest. only things that let that sort of a setup down is A) insane amounts of heat B) insane amounts of space C) insane amounts of power and D) not really great scaling for quad-fire, its not the technology thats flawed, just the drivers powering it. also be honest, what sort of setup requires that sort of power anyways? at the end of the day it just comes down to what do you want from your system, don't you want a top of the range powerhouse with no expense spared? or a potent system with some slightly out-dated componants? both complete the task in hand equally well, just personally taste i guess...
if ATI got their fingers out of their behinds and actually came up with some killer crossfire friendly drivers, would turn the GTX 480 away completely, but since they haven't (yet) then logically its the best option, unless you already happened to have crossfire capable motherboard and one 4890, in which case add another, bobs your uncle, save yourself a couple hundred quid.
True to some extent but dx11 is basically dx10 done properly. The added effects of dx11, namely tesselation and proper depth of field effects aren't amazing but the rendering pathways for dx11/10/9 stuff is where it comes into its own. Basically its multithreading done properly.
Personally, I'd buy the 480 as you get dx11, physicsX and CUDA, the later being immense if you use photoshop and other compatible programs.
Gotta remember though, if someone is looking at buying a 480, price isn't an issue in the first place
a couple of months ago Nvidia was getting completely bashed by ATI Fans, even I was getting a hard time explaining my new gtx480 didnt get as hot as everyone was trying to make out, it was not as noisy as people were trying to make out..... to be honest this forum appeared only to be ATI only