It has been in awhile where both AMD and NVIDIA release top performance card at the same time. NVIDIA recently launched the GTX 580 and GTX 570 based on the refined Fermi core. The GF110 used in the GTX 580 and GTX 570 rectify some of the issue with the original Fermi, namely the high power consumption and heat output. NVIDIA is able to further increase the performance on their graphic cards with the GTX 580 and GTX 570 while maintaining the same power envelop as the GTX 480 and GTX 470. In my opinion, the GF110 should really be how Fermi should be. While NVIDIA refines the Fermi core, AMD is launching a brand new GPU design codenamed Cayman. Cayman is going to be AMD’s flagship products for 2011. The two cards that are released today, the HD 6970 and the HD 6950, are the first cards off the Cayman architecture. The HD 6970 is going to be AMD’s flagship product where it is aimed to compete against NVIDIA’s GTX 580 for the fastest GPU crown, while the HD 6950 is kind of AMD’s secret weapon that is designed to fill the void of the GPU market at $300 price range. I will not re-iterate the technical aspect of the HD 6900 series because Bjorn has written an extensive article detailing the architectural design of the Cayman and the new features found with the HD 6900 series. In essence, AMD design the HD 6900 series with four major goals in mind: