just trolling through PcCasegear like many nights, checking my future build(s), and I noticed that there are some sales on 7970s to the point where they are priced competitively with 7950's, so if your in Australia looking at a new GPU, sus it out.
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=193_877&vk_sort=4
(sorry if this comes accross as advertising, it's not, i would just like someone here to benefit from this sale as I probably won't :( )
same is going on on newegg.
as far as advertising goes, your is germane, and not a huge promotional spiel.
could this possibly mean an anouncement on the 8XXX series in the coming days?
if that happens my build will have one of those instead if a 780
9000 series, and it will be around October would be my best guess. The 8000 series is a hand picked lot of 7000 series they are selling to OEM systems builders. I'm surmising that they will do it in October to get in line with the holidays and pre-holiday shopping. It wouldn't make sense to release a new product 5 months out from the biggest part of the holiday season. They could release it closer to the holiday rush, mark up the price however much they want, throw in a buttload of games for free and people will buy it regardless of its price. Then they simply knock prices down the first 2 weeks of January after they have made the bulk of sales.
I would seriously wait till after the first of January to get one. You are going to pay more than is necessary and possibly end up with a product launch piece of hardware that needs to be returned/RMA'ed. NEVER buy product launch hardware. It's always a consumer trap to get the most money out of you and typically the hardware hasn't been fully debugged before they release it.
7990 is $700 now