Do these really have an unlocked shader core now? That would really open up potential of this card.

ATIs triumphant return to the market? or another budget product unable to take the crown? I'm betting it'l put the 9800GTX in its place, and if it can hit the estimated MSRP of $299 This will be the card to use at least until the G92 shrink. By the same margine, the 4870X2 will put the 9800GX2 in its place. or so I hope, ATI needs a profitable product!!

Shaders no longer locked to the core ? Cheers .

Shaders no longer locked is not what the HD series needed, but more texture units.
Altough the G92 has up to 64 TUs, the Hd 4870 achieve 38,8% more texture filling than the 8800 Ultra, wich is the fastest single GPU yet.
Lets hope for the best.

GDDR5.....intersting, wonder how it perform compare to GDDR4/GDDR3

Well in a nutshell, GDDR5 offers a modest increase in performance over GDDR4 and a fairly significant increase in performance over GDDR3. The really big change with it is that it uses significantly less power, one of the Achilles Heels of todays GPU's. Its in the range of 30-40% less power for the memory.
Here's some more info if you want it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDDR5

I believe the GPU guys (whos running the db these days?) are mistaken. The Shader and core clock will still be one to one. That said, on TSMCs 55nm process, the HD3870 could easily crack 1000MHz.

3870MHz!!!. nvidia's upcoming cards shouldn't have gddr3 anymore.

@jugger - Most games mainly require shader horsepower , often the need
for shaders and texture fill rate is at 5:1 or 7:1 ... if not higher .
@MrWizard6600 - a number of sites have already posted info about the shaders running at 1.05 Ghz while core remains at 850 Mhz .

This card has nearly double the shader operations of the HD 2900 XT ... I wonder if it's going to be put in use .