I still want to know how NV plans to supply GTX690 cards when GTX680 sells out almost immediately. GTX690 uses 2 chips. Isn’t it better for NV and its partners to sell a single GTX680 for $499 than a single GTX690 for $699-799? Right now from a profit perspective it seems like selling 2 chips for $699 isn’t very bright when a single such chip in a card sells out for $499!

Hey Christian, sorry if I didn’t elaborate more.

For instance, let’s say NV sells GTX680 GK104 chip to its board partners for $100, then they assemble the card and sell it for $499. Now NV can sell them 2x GTX680s for $200 so that they can sell GTX690 for $699. 

Since GTX680s are already selling out like hotcakes, why would NV’s board partners want to use up 2 GK104s on a $699 card when they can resell them as 2 separate GTX680 boards. Remember, the memory size on the 690 will be essentially double that of the 680 since each GPU will have 2GB for itself. Therefore, there isn’t much cost savings besides the PCB and maybe the cooler on the 690 card. Surely the board partners will be better off selling all the 680s they can before there is any incentive to sell 690s? That’s what I don’t understand. Dual-GPU card is more important for brand image to say your brand has the fastest card available. In terms of profits, I can’t seem to understand how financially it makes sense to sell 2xGK104s bundled into a 690 for $699 as opposed to selling 2x GTX680 cards for $499 x 2 = $1000

 You are right :)

True. HD7970 is pretty good now that after market versions can be had for $460 or so. With low availability of 680s and more reasonable pricing on the 7970s, it’s harder to justify waiting for the 680.

As a side note, imho we will only need 1 more generation with 50-70% performance increase and there won’t be a single game that wouldn’t be maxed out fully on 1 screen, without going wild with Super-Sampling. HD7970/680 crush BF3, SKYRIM and Crysis 2. That just leaves Crysis 1/Warhead, Metro 2033 and Witcher 2 with Uber setting as the last remaining 3-4 games that still can’t be maxed out at 2560×1600. Next generation GPUs will finish them and there will be literally no reason to upgrade. 

The tail-end of the console generation has really stagnated PC graphics. NV and AMD better start worrying because every new generation of GPUs there are less and less games left that actually need an upgrade. Every generation before I was excited to upgrade because I could actually see the benefits. I am not seeing any reason to upgrade in 2012 and 2013 may not be any different. 

Perhaps we will see 2014-2015 when the next graphical leap will take place as next generation consoles start selling in larger volumes and desktop may get higher PPI displays.