If its any help, I've been doing much reading about the best regarded cards and the
variances in performance. Looking at the same cards you've been looking at and the
vs shootout test on different games.

The ATI 6950 is looking to be "the" card of the current generation, its far less money than the 6970 with almost the same performance stats across the board. Literally not more than 3-5 frames difference at extreme settings and highest resolutions.

If run in SLI the 2gb 6950 will outperform the brand new Nvid 590 4gb and ATI 6990 4gb.
Apparently the new deul core cards 590 / 6990 cannot fully access the 4gb onboard ram where in SLI the 6950's can... Worth considering, especially when you can get 2 x 2gb 6950's for far less than the price of 1x 6990 or 590.

read this little article about the top 15 GPUs - especially the 6950...

http://www.gadgetstech.co.uk/2011/04...e-world-today/

Hope this helps...