Originally posted by: Cookie Monster
You know this reminds me of nVIDIA who openly spoke about NV30 and its road to failure (with the launch of the NV40).
Link
However its a fact that ATi has always failed to deliver on the $200 front for sometime. They have always been lackluster in performance with the initial parts and had very late replies. (6600GT, 7600GT, 9600GT, 8800GT etc etc). Im just surprised that it took them years to finally release a bang per buck card in awhile.
edit - Its strange how market perceptiveness has changed from the days of G71/R580. G71 was strikingly similar to the R580. nVIDIA chose to pursue a similar goal like ATi did with RV770. Instead of 32 pipeline monolithic monster, they went for a smaller die, lower transistor part while maintaining higher performance through higher clocks and faster GDDR3 modules available at the time. Yet the halo effect from the X1900XTX still had many consumers thinking that ATi was the dominant leader at the time. Same goes for G92.
Actually looking back at nVIDIA's development cycle they have brought both the bigger die and performance "RV770" approach. I think AT focused too much on the former and forgot about the latter.
NV45 -> NV42 (Remember the 6800GS outperforming the 6800ultra variants?).
G70 -> G71 (7900GT/GS etc bringing 7800GTX performance for the cheap)
G80 -> G92/G92b (8800GT performing on a similar level to the 8800GTX)