I'm really thrilled with the 32 TMU news. It's interesting that the fill rate will only now be catching up to the lower high end of current gen of Nvidia cards, even while Nvidias NEXT gen is around the corner. In other words AMD is still behind the ball there, even after doubling, which just goes to show how amazingly far back they were in the first place. Still, it's a start.
At 800 million transistors, I dont expect this to compete with GT200's alleged 1.3 billion. I like the prices though, very affordable.
It sets up a few interesting scenarios as well. If GT200 is even a few weeks later than May, which seems all but a cinch, AMD is likely going to have the undisputed fastest card for a period of time. And that is likely to garner them some hefty sales from the enthusiast community in that period. The type of people that have to have the fastest all the time (and the low prices should make it a pretty easy sale). Further, if AMD is truly on a six month schedule, then the refresh might very well be hitting not long after GT200.
It seems like it might be an interesting case of diverging strategies, might it be valid to persue smaller less challenging chips at more regular intervals, than go whole hog with a monster chip strategy that may suffer delays like GT200?
Anyways, cant wait to see how next gen cards handle Crysis. Even a doubling of speed will leave that game still a tough challenge for GPU's. Considering with a 9600GT I get around 20-24 FPS with high settings at 1680X1050 and no AA. Even twice as fast will struggle to handle ultra high setting and AA. I suspect we wont truly see Crysis dominated for yet another generation!