The codename is Hecatoncheires, named after gigantic fifty headed creatures of great strength in Greek mythology which despite being weaker than Titans, managed to beat them. A simple analogy would put Nvidia in the role of Titans, and since Hecatoncheires had more heads, this would suggest a larger chip with more shaders.

Sapphire wants $379.99 for SAPPHIRE 100281SR Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video - Retail while Diamond wants $384.99 for its DIAMOND 5870PE51G Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video- Retail.

3) You've seen our results of the HD 5870 in Crossfire; this should give a good understanding of what the HD 5870 X2 is going to offer. Is NVIDIA confident in saying that come launch of the GT 300 the red teams graphics cards are something we're going to be forgetting about?

We are confident that when the Fermi-based GeForce products ship that we will maintain our performance crown. Even today our GeForce GTX 285 significantly outperforms the HD 5870 in next gen games like Batman Arkham Asylum with physics. In fact, even our GeForce GTS 250 outperforms it. That's fundamentally the difference between us and AMD. We focus on graphics plus cool effects like physics and 3D stereo, whereas AMD just makes incremental changes to their graphics cards.

Just as Gigabyte HD 5770, Asus HD 5770 is based on ATI reference design - it features a shorter PCB than HD 5850 and comes with a 6pin external power connector. The card packs 8 Hynix GDDR5 chips, core/memory clock of 850/1200MHz, and dual DVIs, HDMI & DisplayPort connectivities.