I understand where you are coming from Calin, a moderately priced mid-range card like the 6970 that can hit 45fps on BF3 @ ultra... not a bad little card.
The problem though is graphics card fever, doesn't matter how good it is, always want more! 
I can quite happily afford any top end card but always feel much better getting something a gen or so behind and getting a good deal, it's the bargain hunter in me, esp. if I can pick one up which can be flashed to enable additional shaders, pipelines etc. for no money.
Not in my case. I play on fairly low res monitor (1680x1050) so a good card should handle a lot of games with ease. If it does, I don't change it. As it stands now, 6970 can't give a 50-60FPS with top image quality (or close) in a lot of games. That 40 FPS în BF 3 is a joke due to stutter and lag in movement that gives the sensation of a 20FPS gameplay (all Dice's fault in my book - poor multiplayer optimization just like in BC2; same engine after all). That's the story behind a lot of cards witch doesn't show in almost none of the reviews (except perhaps, for techreport inside the second method). That was the story of 5850, 5770, GTX 470, GT 440 (including the stutter with physix running on the same GPU that does the 3D part too) in my case.
I like to pay 200E/card that will give me in the end, the same time value as two 100E card, plus the benefit of the first year's high end performance vs. medium/mainstream two years in a row. It doesn't mean that my way of upgrading is better (that 200E may very well be 230-250E
), but is definitely fine by me.
Anyway, my point is that a card is good or bad only to the person's "desires" if it's not benchmarked on the best IQ the game can give (like most reviewers do). For some, turning down a detail is unacceptable, but the same detail, will mean nothing for the other guy. Unfortunately, the obscene prices of the "new" HD7xxx series and Gf 6xx series, keep that two generations old card, at a good price point for a low/medium budget gamer with all it's problems that I've stated above.
At 1680x1050 my 5870 struggles like crazy with Serious Sam 3 with high settings so have to be toned down quite a bit and there are times in DIII where there is a bit of slow down. On the whole, though, I am very happy with the card, especially as it was bought for me as a gift and can't see me upgrading for a while yet.
Mainly because I have no money
Serious Sam goes over 1GB vRAM quite often - more and more games do that. I can play on the same res on ultra with no major problems, somtething in the line of 60-70FPS+, rarely dips into high 30-40, but, the drop doesn't feel abrupt and it still waaaay smoother than BF 3.
Considering there shouldn't be a huge gap between the cards 5870 vs. 6970 (SS 3 don't do DX 11/tessellation), that could be the only explanation I see. To bad they've crippled the card with only 1GB RAM.
