I don't see AMD having the lead in performance, or price/performance, right now. Just curious, what makes you believe that AMD is "clearly in the lead now"?
Well it depends on what you're after. From a pure performance single GPU solution perspective(not single card dual GPU aka 5970) I will concede GTX480 is king of the hill…When I said ATI had the lead I meant more in terms of product success, overall price/performance, thermals/acoustics/power consumption and image quality.
That said, since this is a Fermi thread I will point out where it fails compared to AMD's evergreen lineup:
-First and foremost, AMD has a full DX11 lineup unlike NV - from the lowly 5670 up to their 5970. The real issue for NV's Fermi is that they are working with the exact same core, GF100. The difference between GTX 480, 470 and 465 is simply a few disabled blocks(aka binning), either by design or by necessity(IE disabling non/malfunctioning blocks). Which translates into parts that sometimes consume similar power while providing lower performance(
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3745/nvidias-geforce-gtx-465/14). Where as ATI has Cypress(5800) series, Juniper(5700) series, Redwood(5600+5500) and Cedar(5400) series cards. All of which feature their own core. Now, GF104 might finally shake things up a bit – frankly that part is long overdue… As is a refresh/shrink of GF100. It's worth noting that even a die shrink might not be enough to reign in power and allow nvidia to produce a dual gpu card.
-If you read through the previously linked anandtech thread you will see that in terms of thermals, acoustics and power consumption Fermi's performance is terrible. Heck, AMD's dual GPU 5970 consumes less power under load than a single GTX480. Not only do you have a question of performance per watt but you also have to consider that an AMD GPU might be a pure drop in upgrade where as the GTX480 could require a new PSU. This is literally where I would find myself if I was considering upgrading GPUs as I have a Corsair 550vx(amazing PSU btw). Sure you could argue that Corsair's CWT and Seasonic built units are great and can be pushed up to and in some cases beyond their max(for my 550 that's 41A on the 12v rail). But why go there? Now I know performance per watt might sound like a crazy metric to even bother considering; yet in an area with exceptionally high energy costs and living in a house with my brother + 1 more housemate(both of which use my gaming PC more than I do) said performance per/watt figure becomes very important when considering any potential upgrade.
-If you look at AMD's design their smaller more efficient approach has paid off in spades. Fermi is a monster @ 3bn trannies and a die size of 529mm^2 especially when compared to Cypress which comes in at 2.15bn trannies and 334mm^2. Not only does AMD have more dies per wafer as a result of their physically smaller size, they're also less "complex" cores and as such have provided (significantly?) better yields.
-AMD has also finally improved upon something where they were sorely lacking/getting beat by Nvidia… Before, I found Nvidia's Angle dependent Anisotropic Filtering algorithm to be superior, now that AMD has implemented their Angle
Independent Anisotropic Filtering they rule the roost.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/09/30/ati-radeon-hd-5870-architecture-analysis/12
-And lastly, Nvidia's drivers are no longer perceptibly better than ATI's, they're roughly equal. Which isn't necessarily bad, just not an advantage for the green team anymore.