Conjecturing somewhat, GeForce GTX 480 is probably 75 per cent of the high-end GPU that was imagined by NVIDIA early last year. Our numbers show that NVIDIA's finest single-GPU card is, on average, around 20 per cent faster than AMD's Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB at a 2,560x1,600 resolution. GeForce GTX 480 is due to cost some 40 per cent more, so whilst the trade-off between extra expense and performance isn't ideal, it's not shockingly bad, either.
Not as bad as some had hoped afterall!
edit: hexus.net is down at the moment but someone managed to capture all the benchmarks:
http://www.computerbase.de/forum/showpost.php?p=7597425&postcount=3418