One thing I haven't seen people talk about is the noise level of a gpu that has a TPD of 240~ watts. Does anyone have an idea how loud this little guy is going to be? I can only imagine it is going to be up there with the 2900xt or the 5800 ultra.
You are imagining if you think the 2900xt is *loud* in actual day to day use. My VisionTek's VGA cooler idle is only slightly louder than my 8800GTX. And my case is cooler too!
At normal gaming play - not overclocked - the 2900xt is not very noticeable; barely more than my GTX. OTOH, if i crank the cooler past 60% or so, it is a real "whoosh" of air.
My x1950p/x850xt and 7800GS-OC were all a hell of a lot more annoying than my 2900xt .. so it depends on the design, i would say.
. . . Nvidia obviously knew that they were about to lose the performance crown to a multi-GPU setup so they planted the seed of FUD, having it spread across the internet like a plague just in time for everyone to spit on the 4870X2 when benchmarks come out showing it beating up on the GTX280.
if i said that, what would you have said to me?
So if it IS true that the 4870x2 beats up on the GTX x1, clearly we should expect a GTX-x2 with the shrink; do you think Nvidia will allow AMD to keep
any performance crown? i doubt it even if they have to create another expensive unappetizing and ugly sandwich just to blast it. My opinion, clearly!
finally, if you use CrossFireAA or SLI-AA - non-AFR - you bypass the Micro Stutter in most cases. Dual-GPU setups generally allow you to crank up the detail and the filtering for us guys with modest displays like 16x10 or 16x12 - like i do with 2900xt crossfire; of course i eventually plan to have GTX-280 SLi so i will see if Micro Stutter is a big deal or not; i generally like Crossfire although i would prefer a single more powerful GPU and mostly play with my GTX.