Hmm. Well I was cautiously optimistic when the initial Fermi information came out a couple of days ago, but with a bit more thought, I am less so. Really all we've had is a couple of canned benchmarks and PR material. Without all the other information such as independent gaming benchmarks, clocks, power, noise, heat, price, etc, there isn't really enough information to form an opinion on the product as a whole. Fermi could be ten times faster than the competition, but if it sounds like a jet engine and costs ten times the price, it won't be a viable mainstream product, even for the gaming high end. I agree wholeheartedly with Rys - we still don't know enough, and what we do know is just from Nvidia marketing with their expected bias and spin.
Fermi is still several months away, and the ATI refresh will be straight on top of it, no doubt with price cuts on their current cards. This will change the context of Fermi as a product by the time it finally arrives in the market. When Fermi finally arrives in that new competitive landscape, and we actually know what it is beyond the current constrained PR spin, we can actually decide if it's any good, and more or less desirable than competitor offereings.
I suspect that even if Fermi wins the battle at the high end, ATI will win the war with their better yields, smaller dies, more latitude for price cuts, power/heat envelopes, and a full top to bottom DX11 range. I think Nvidia may not make much money if it has to cut prices, and may not sell many units if they cost so much more than an ATI product that offers nearly all the same gaming performance for significantly less money.
Also, more interesting will be what happens at the end of the year, with a Fermi re-spin to give us a full 512 SP product at better clockspeeds, but it may well be facing the R9xx - possibly on a 32nm Gobal Foundries process? I think the next 12 months will be very interesting, with frantic competition and some very interesting new products at great prices for gamers.
