For benchmarkers, certain games and e-peen - it's a winner. For normal users it's a fat waste of cash. I'm not surprised either. I called it months ago. My only disappointment is that it's not cheaper. Now ATi have no incentive to reduce their prices.

thats the biggest downer about the whole thing, but hopefully the GTS450 and 440 i linked to earlier will change that when they are released this summer

Anybody buying a new GPU in the summer either has no life, or doesn't live where I do

I think it might be worth picking one up when they drop in price to around £200-£250...

The thing is, TSMC hasn't yet demonstrated how commercially viable its next fabrication node (likely 28nm) is, so while we fully expect Nvidia to 'pull an ATI HD 3000 series' in six months time and re-do Fermi with a smaller process, resulting in a much more power efficient GPU, TSMC's troubles - and the fact Nvidia is desperate for a new process - means Nvidia is likely looking to Global Foundries, the manufacturing firm spun off from AMD last year.