So, obviously. Checkin' my tech sites everyday, noticed on Thursday the HUGE price drops on the GTX400 series to almost mind-blowing numbers (didn't check the current ATi5000 series prices) and thought "Well, I guess ATi is finally releasing their 6000 series soon). Sure enough, today I checked Tom's and there is a nice little article about the 6000 series. Did they launch yesterday? Was there a press conference for it yesterday? I do not know, I'm still a little hungover to find out and I have other pressing matters on my mind today, but in the meantime of finding answers to these questions, here's an article from Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850-barts,2776.html
They released on friday worldwide and Nvidia have been cutting their prices right before launch. The 68XX series is actually meant to be a replacement for the 57XX series and they're supposed to compete with the geforce 460 768 mb and 1gb versions. They both live up to expectations and the 6870 is at least on par with the geforce 470 but with lower temps and power consumption. AMD (ATI has been taken over by AMD) are gonna release the 69XX series in november and they sure as hell are gonna beat anything out there today, seeing as the 6870 is close to a 5870 performancewise.