Who the Phenoms are relevant for are those with AM2 boards who are looking to make the transition to quad-core. 790 FX platform appears to have not matured yet.

The fact is that WinXP was not left wanting in terms of its gaming performance and compatibility. DirectX10 is a vehicle to sell Vista, and hawk Live-enabled games period, so that you may eventually have to pay to play online even on a PC non MMORPGs. WinXP could have easily adopted to DirectX10. And never pay for a graphics card for future applications. Especially during the transition of API period such as this move to DirectX10, not to mention a whole new OS.

I believe that 8000s series has matured enough in drivers that the current performance is as high as they will remain and be optimized for. By fall Nvidia will stick to their one year refresh cycle and announce a new series. On the other hand, ATi may have some more room for driver refinement and other problems regarding incompatible issues can still be ironed out via their monthly Catalyst releases, which makes R600 intriguing. Either way, the true tests for these cards will arrive by the end of the year with the arrival of more DX10 titles. As of now, they present both good choices, although I consider the term 'bargain' does not exist in the realm of graphics card business.

Here is a list of upcoming DX10 games in the near future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directx_10_games I think that the most reasonable time for purchasing a DX10 enabled card will be at the end of the year. For the price of $400 or over, you would at least expect the card to last two years, or even more. When at the cusp of ushering in a new technology in terms of DirectX10 or the new OS, the transition could depreciate the value of your investment that much quickly. R600 architecture adopted for more quiet mainstream solutions such as 2600 could retain more value as it fits in the low to mid range segment occupied by less than impressive 8600. That is where AMD could make its mark.

I think XTX version of it would be R650, probably due by the end of the year. AMD could have been trying to make the current XT version their flagship but sort of backed off when the technical problems could not be circumvented, such as heat, leaking power, etc. This is by no means a high yield item, and I hear there had been many manufacturing difficulties with the 85nm process they've been using. Right now, AMD is considering their top of the line solution to be 2900XT in crossfire setup.

http://www.ixbt.com/video3/r600-part3-d.shtml#p818 It seems the driver set is yet premature...I generally appreciate the monthly Catalyst updates so maybe the performance can be further optimized. Still worried about the heat, fan noise, and energy consumption, though, not that it hampers any immediate overclocking ability. It look more and more like that 2900 XT takes after the discontinued All-in-Wonder products in some of its features. It is a well-rounded card, for sure, aside from pushing some reasonable framerates. Another thing to hope for is that more X360 games get fast tracked as ports on to the PC, but whatever.

Well...I am not so sure about the benchmarks anymore, I reached that conclusion from reading very hostile reception at HardOCP, but the card is rated rather high on other site reviews. I do hope that AMD could improve upon their drivers to make this card more universally accepted. Past the added disadvantage of price inflation for an introductory product, this could fatten AMD's bottom line with its more mainstream cousins.

Nvidia wins this round...six months later its release. Maybe an overreaction on their part to release the Ultras? When's the 65 nm refresh coming?

Make God of War 2 run PERFECTLY on the system. Or failing that, bundle PS3 with PS2.

Perhaps flash RAM will replace the normal DRAMs in the future, not to mention conventional storage devices based on platters. I wonder if one can 'overclock' it?