From Neutral Day
We reported the 40D would remain current on August 19, this goes to that as well.
Edited a bit for privacy.
“… so you might want to add that as an update in your post, the noise and image quality should be right in line with the D300 as this camera was intended specifically to compete with the D300. It will be announced on the 26th of this month.”
His initial comment was related to some folks being down on the specs from china, and he was saying that ISO is up in the air right now, but that the camera WAS NOT a 40D replacement, but meant to compete with the D300 and that the 5d replacement would come at Photokina.”
I always thought the 40D matched the D300 anyway. From my personal experience, I found any setting of Nikon's noise reduction to be far too aggressive. The 40D retained more detail. Keep in mind my testing of gear is real world and not set up in a studio.
Thanks for the info.
Neutral Day also has a posting saying the 50D will actually do ISO 25,600.
EOS 50D Full Resolution Sample Images
EF-S 17-55 ISO 100
EF 16-35 II ISO 400
EF 600 ISO 1600