Originally Posted by
Rutnick
who CARES about the FD? It's still a FD. The crank is where the vast majority of the shifting improvement is going to happen. Put a shimano 7800 crank on a sram bike with a sram force or rival FD and it will shift almost identical to an all shimano bike.
I suspect that the small community of people who installed Ultegra or Dura-Ace FDs on their SRAM bikes might care. People who still have full SRAM drivetrain and want improvements also care.
Also of note, I expect the chainrings to hit all the SRAM road groups quickly. You can already get the new X-Glide rings on X5 mountain cranks. So I expect them to hit Force and Rival real soon and Apex before overly long. (For people not familiar with SRAM MTB gear, X5 is pretty humble. Think Apex, or if a road group existed below Apex, that would be it.)