I am talking about AMD's best foot forward vs. NV's on the same node. GTX280 > 4870
Most sites had that as a win for the 4870, by a distance. A vastly smaller die that was within 10-15%. The 4870x2 also crushed the 280 and basically tied with the 295 while being far cheaper to manufacture.
10% or so with a much bigger die? This is not a "win", but your belief that it is, is why AMD is going big this time.
So that was what, 10-15% faster, 6 months later and with near double power draw?
Another 10-15%, still with a huge die vs AMD's cancelled 32nm chip.
20% faster, 11 months later, 65% more transistors and 59% more area is a win for you? Are you even serious?
In each generation, NV is always on top 15% at least.
They always have dies that are much bigger, that's the only reason. That was because AMD's strategy was for a smaller die. There is no other reason why. There is no reason to believe that AMD won't beat Titan this time around with a bigger die.
GTX680 vs. 7970 doesn't really count since it's more of a flagship delay by NV than NV's inability to compete.
If Titan is a flagship delay, Hawaii is a flagship delay.
In fact, with 780, NV crushed AMD by an embarrassing amount.
Right, almost a year later and with ~60% more resources, winning by only 20%. That's embarrassing for sure.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and see what they can come up with 9970 but I bet 780 OC will beat 9970 OC by 15% still.
I will take that bet.
I am not saying AMD will not increase die size, but I am not sure I believe they'll make a chip with 470-480mm2 right now.
They won't, it'll be over 500mm2.
Nope, I never said that at all in relation to Tahiti. I am saying that while they will improve performance/watt and perf/mm2 over Tahiti, I don't think 9970 OC will match 780 OC. My view is they'll go bigger chip but not big enough that they'll be able to get away with only 975mhz clocks. I believe their clocks will be higher which will leave a lot less room for overclocking. I am betting that they will have very aggressive Turbo similar to what NV now has with Kepler. With NV since they made such a large 561mm2 chip, they could afford to clock it in mid-800s/low-900s. I do not believe AMD will have this die size luxury. As a result, they'll have to settle between a balance of die size and clock speed.
There are 3 desktop Hawaii SKU's, XT, Pro and LE. What is the reason for that if it's not a (really) big die? How many months did we have to wait for Tahiti LE, and even then it was given a 7870 tag.
For 5 AMD generations we got hype - 2900XT, 3870, 4870, 5870, 6970. None of those chips lived up to the hype, always beaten by NV.
What hype did you see about the 3870 and 4870? As for the 5870, it crushed Fermi almost single-handedly. To say it didn't live up to the hype is totally absurd, what planet are you living on? It is probably THE great card of the last 5 years.
Yes the 6970 was disappointing but it was only half the card it was supposed to be because of TSMC.
Why would I bet that this generation suddenly AMD will beat NV's best card if they haven't done it for 5 generations in a row?
Why would you bet on Nvidia releasing their midrange card first on 28nm? Simply put, strategies change by necessity. Nvidia got lucky because AMD got lazy with Tahiti. Do you really believe they'll make that same mistake twice?
6970 was 389mm2, but 7970 is only 365mm2. They haven't been moving up.
You're just not listening. AMD knows that big early chips at TSMC are disasters waiting to happen. Even Nvidia realised that eventually. Now though, there is no reason at all to not go with a very big chip on 28nm. It will be over a year before TSMC's 20nm is even in decent shape (2 years from now we might see a huge chip), Nvidia will go with a midrange 20nm chip first anyway and it won't be able to beat a large 28nm gpu.