Just another case for - What works for you works. I have had nothing but AMD - ATI - and SB for as long as I can remember and they have always worked for me and thats why I stick with them.

Why would you complain it doesn't beat a 5970? Its direct competition is the 5870, not a dual GPU card.

it supposed to be most powerful card on the market. it has been almost 4 months since 5970 was released and half year since 5870 and 480 cannot beat 5970 and barely beats 5870?
and you cannot stack two 480 together i think. it already draws the same amount of power as dual gpu. stack two and it goes kaboom. :)

See Anandtech review I posted earlier - they have SLI benchmarks. The question is - whether they will actually release a 2-in-1 card. One 480 still draws more power than a 5970.

Also if ATI drops the price on the 5970 which is already pretty close to the gtx 480 than they will be in the same price range.

It's supposed to be the most powerful single GPU on the market, which it looks to be right now. As far as stacking two together: you can SLI them, and there are benchmarks out now that show it. And for once it looks like nVidia has a card that will actually double (or close to it) the performance of a single card when in SLI.
Again, you can't throw it against a dual GPU and complain it doesn't measure up. At least compare apples to apples.

okay. from what i found out:
for now there cannot be 480 dual gpu single card. it is technically illegal. A single card is prohibited from drawing more than 300W of power. a single gpu 480 already draws close to that. so for now no dual core single card.
and single gpu, double gpu... doesn't really matter. single card matters. whether it has 2 cores or one core doesn't i guess. But you are technically correct coel.
the thing is that ati needs to drop prices by 20% and nvidia is screwed. 5970 will costs close or maybe even less than 480 and 5870 which is NOT much slower will become dirt cheap.
Or maybe nvidia messed up drivers and when new drivers are released we will see a huge boost with the card. Doubt it but it happened before... and so did FX series.

Why is it illegal?

Whoever controls PCI-e standard said that a card cannot draw more than 300W. If it does then the card wouldn't be approved. Of course it can still be sold but without official approval which would result in loss of some liabilities precautions, warranties... so nobody will touch it with a mile long stick.
personally i don't understand it completely myself. need more research :D

Thanks

If it's substantially cheaper than ATI's offerings it might not be so bad.

I'm not convinced by this card. The power consumption is way too high given the performances. And the Fan seems to make quite some noise to dissipate such heat.
And to those saying that ATI has bad drivers, ok. Same as nVidia has bad drivers. Should I remember you some that made GeForce burn because the driver set the fan too low ? ATI and nVidia have bad drivers and good drivers. You can't compare them on that.
But for hardware ? I still prefer ATI. They are still the best bang for your bucks.

Because at the moment the 5870 gives you decent performance for substantially less cost. The GTX 480 will retail at $500 for a little more you can have a 5970. It's a no brainer at the moment, NVidia's offering just doesn't offer any value.

'For a little more'? The best price I've seen for a 5970 is about $650 CDN, Best price I've seen for the GTX 480 is $540 CDN. Best price I've seen for a 5870 is about $420 CDN. Again, I feel you're comparing apples and oranges. But it's all moot. I agree with you that the GTX 480 isn't impressive enough to warrant the cash outlay, but for different reasons, I guess.

Like you just said the 5870 is $120 CDN cheaper than the GTX 480 and offers almost the same performance. As for the 5970 all Nvidia need is for ATI to drop the price to complete the fail.