I'm making this thread so that all current and future discussion of the current generation GTX 500 series and HD 6000 series graphics cards can be discussed in one place. News and leaks can also go here. I will update OP as necessary. 
 
October 21, 2010: AMD Radeon HD 6850 and 6870
November 9, 2010: Nvidia GTX 580 
December 7, 2010: Nvidia GTX 570  
December 15, 2010: AMD Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 
January 25, 2011: Nvidia GTX 560 Ti  
March 8, 2011: AMD Radeon HD 6990
March 15, 2011: Nvidia GTX 550 Ti  
March 22, 2011: Nvidia GTX 590 
Q2 2011: AMD Radeon HD 6750 and 6770 
 
Recent news: 
 
Nvidia dual GPU launching later in March
 
Performance reviews (uses most recent graphics card reviews; however numbers are available and applicable for all cards)
 
Anandtech  
HardwareCanucks
TechPowerUP! 
 
more (looks in video cards section for more reviews from other sites)  
 
State of Current Graphics Cards:
 

HD 6990  

Very High End

GTX 580  

High End

GTX 480   

HD 6970 

HD 4870X2   

Upper Mid End

HD 6950 1GB

HD 5870

GTX 560 Ti 

GTX 470   

Mid End

HD 5850

GTX 285

HD 6850

GTX 460 1GB

GTX 465 

GTX 275 

GTX 280 

GTX 460 768MB 

This would totally a good time for me to pick up a 200 or 400 series card :o

I'm waiting on the 6970 to build my new rig :D

Not touching an ati/amd card ever again. So many issues with my 5770 that I'm just gonna stick with nvidia from now til the day I die. I'll still use their processors however, they are quite awesome.

Fuck it, I can't be bothered waiting any longer, might just go with the GTX 580 and get my new rig next week. 

According to this, the 6970 will "not perform at the same levels" as the GTX 580, but it isn't targeted at the same price point either. The story ended with "You can rest assured however that the upcoming cards from AMD are going to be absolutely stunning".

Is there currently a reason, as a gamer, to buy one of these top of the line cards? I'm just using a modest GTX 285 and it handles what I want it to at the moment. What games are asking for this kind of power?

How come you don't post any news from Tested? 
 
http://www.tested.com/news/tested-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-video-card/1299/  
http://www.tested.com/news/tested-amd-radeon-hd-6870-6850-video-cards/1197/ 
 
Anyways, I would like to get the Nvidia GTX 580, but I just bought a new video card. The next time I would buy a new one would be in a few years when I upgrade my motherboard, processor, and memory.

" Is there currently a reason, as a gamer, to buy one of these top of the line cards? I'm just using a modest GTX 285 and it handles what I want it to at the moment. What games are asking for this kind of power? "

I've ordered my new rig, including the GTX 580. My new motherboard also supports SLI so I can add another GTX 580 later on.

" @Geno:  thats going to be interesting to see , i doubt it will be a full 580x2 though , that would just need a ridiculous amount of power , and the heat sink would have to weigh like 10 pounds to handle the TDP. "

and some rumors from the opposite side of the fence 
 
 http://www.techpowerup.com/135001/AMD-Cayman-Antilles-Specifications-Surface.html

Looking at the FLOPs performance, 6TFLOPs is 3x more than the 6870 which seems a bit impossible. Even accounting for the energy savings from not needing extra PCBs, at 300W it would seem limited to about overclocked 6870 Crossfire in terms of performance, which is about 15% faster than a 5970 (overclocked, 20%). Perhaps another measurement would be to compare FLOPs with the HD 5970? The HD 5970 had 4.64 TFLOPs performance, so the 6990's 6 TFLOPs would be 30% more. How that would translate to gaming performance is unknown, but I think the 6990 having ~+20-30% perf over the 5970 is a pretty reasonable estimate.
 
I'm glad they finally bumped up the VRAM to 2GB, it was about time. Hopefully by this time next year 2GB will be standard. 

This is kind of a random vid but I thought I'd post it anyway, GTX 580 Quad SLI:  
 

 also , its nuts how ye olde crysis wants more than 1,5 GB vram :P "

and some pictures of 570.
 
release day tomorrow  (today in my case)

First official review of GTX 570 is out, and tentative pricing seems to be $350-$375 USD. Performance looks to be exactly in-line with GTX 480.

There will be no PC games that take advantage of these advanced platforms, because most of the PC titles are pos console port popamole shit.  
Wait, let me redress that, unless you play badly optimized Russian games or can opt for 3 screens (2 for Nvidia because those $%#@s can't make a card to support more than 2 without SLI)

" There will be no PC games that take advantage of these advanced platforms, because most of the PC titles are pos console port popamole shit.  Wait, let me redress that, unless you play badly optimized Russian games or can opt for 3 screens (2 for Nvidia because those $%#@s can't make a card to support more than 2 without SLI) "

i want a 6970 for christmas hopefully its an awesome card

Latest leaks: 
 

Meh, I really lost focus on GPUs since the GTX2xx series. I'm more than happy with consoles for now until I see a major need for an upgrade.

" It's good to see that my GTX 580 remains the top dog. I'll wait a while now for a price drop and then pick up another one, and run them SLi. Sweet!!! "

The 6970 isnt what I expected from AMD, but its definitely at the right price. Waiting for 28nm now... 
580 is impressive but priced completely wrong in classic nvidia style, if it pulls some good frames I'm still looking forward to the 6990.

some stuff about the 6900's are great , like the improved tesselation and the xfire scaling compared to 5800 series.
 
but some stuff is wierd , ive seen like cod 4 performance where 5870 does better than the 6970 .
 
and about people having hopes of it beating the 580 GTX .
that would be a pretty huge thing since the actual cayman chip is 389 mm2 , compared to GF110's 520-550 mm2's.
but thats probably where antilles comes in.

" some stuff about the 6900's are great , like the improved tesselation and the xfire scaling compared to 5800 series.  but some stuff is wierd , ive seen like cod 4 performance where 5870 does better than the 6970 .  and about people having hopes of it beating the 580 GTX . that would be a pretty huge thing since the actual cayman chip is 389 mm2 , compared to GF110's 520-550 mm2's. but thats probably where antilles comes in. "

" y@Geno:  i wonder how much nvidia can squeeze out without tipping over the 300 watt border , my guess is ther wont be an official double gpu nvidia card , but someone like galaxy might make one on their own , kinda like the asus ares.   we didnt see an official dual card for the GF100 , GF110 is a refined but i still think they would have to cut it down quite a lot in order to be able to place two on the same pcb. "

" @OdinsThunder said:

" It's good to see that my GTX 580 remains the top dog. I'll wait a while now for a price drop and then pick up another one, and run them SLi. Sweet!!! "

Nice, I'm hoping to get a setup along those lines too at some point next year.   The 6970 is kind of a disappointment in my eyes. AMD's front-runner single GPU barely more powerful (not even as powerful in some reviews) as Nvidia's 2nd place GPU? :/   I think they were making the 6970 as an attack on the GTX 480, but Nv kind of came out of nowhere with the GTX 580 and AMD just wasn't ready for it.   Luckily, the 6950 is decent value at the high end.  "

seen this ? the real reason for the cayman delay 
 

  http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=263668              
 
 
just kidding ( thought i might make that clear ) 
 its probably a factor though.

So some specs are floating around for GTX 560: 384SP, 875Mhz core.  
 
GTX 580 is about 17% faster than GTX 480, and the math matches up exactly.  
 
580 = 512*772 
480 = 480*700  
 
[580]/[480] = 1.176
 
 
So if we compare GTX 460 with 560: 
 
560 = 384*875 
460 = 336*675 
 
[560]/[460] = 1.481 
 
A whopping 48 percent sounds very nice, and would put its performance around HD 6950, perhaps slightly weaker. The GTX 460 had huge overclocking headroom so I'm guessing Nvidia leveraged some of this with GF114. We'll have to wait and see obviously but it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility. 

i dont know if my math is right , but i think 148% of a GTX 460 is above 570 performance in some cases.
 
im looking at the overall performance graph on TPU 
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_570/27.html 
 
im not really that good with % , but if im doing it right , then a 460 GTX is 69% of a GTX 570 , and the other way around a GTX 570 is 144% of a GTX 460. 
 
if we only look at the highest resolution the 570 is 169% of a 460 however.

New reports are saying 825 Core, 30% faster than GTX 460.  
 
Release date ~Jan 19-20, 2011. 
 
Pricing unknown, but based on the current market it's probably looking to replace GTX 470 or compete with HD 6950, so probably around $250-280 is my rough guess. 

thats pretty cool , couple of sites reporting GTX 560 to be released on the 25th btw.