I think they...should...its a HD6xxx....a new generation part...something we should expect...if it was a HD5x9x part then maybe i will keep my expectation down. I want to see a $199 killer part, AMD 6600GT/8800GT so to speak. AMD has been weak in $199 segment for ages.
It's all about (a) market situation and (b) production costs.
Both factors are different now.
Lets start with
(a) market situation here:
When it was launched, HD 5770 basically "competed" against GTX 260, i.e. the GT200b salvage parts. GTX 260 proved a little faster in most benchmarks, but lacked DX11. In the end, Juniper XT launched @ a price tag a little above GTX 260. And it sold like hot cakes.
Consider Barts XT now. If the recent rumors are true, it will compete against GTX 470. So why should they price it (significantly) cheaper than that? A quick search @ newegg reveals that the cheaper versions of GTX 470 ship for $299 at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia dropped those prices a bit in the wake of AMDs new products - but Barts XT still shouldn't ship for less than $250. Actually, given some new features and improved tesselation performance, they could price it @ $279 and you could still call it a good deal given the current market situation.
Now look at
(b) production costs:
Juniper used a new, smaller production process when compared to RV770. Early yields arguably weren't that great - but Juniper still was
a lot smaller (~ 2/3 of RV770), while delivering about the same performance and adding DX11 as a killer-feature. Power savings where big enough to use a simpler PCB and simpler cooling solutions.
Now consider Barts XT. It might come with some considerable perf/mm2 improvements over the "old" Evergreen architecture, but given current performance rumors, I still doubt it will be
a lot smaller than Cypress - at least nowhere near the 1/3 die size savings AMD managed when going from RV770 to Juniper, i.e. from 55nm to 40nm production. Maybe they'll save ~ 20% die space this time around (which would put Barts ~ 270mm2 - still a
great achievement in pushing perf/mm2 on the same process node).
In the end (and that's the most important point - a lot more important than the comparision with Cypress), Barts most certainly will be
a lot bigger than
Juniper. It will consume a lot more power, need a more complex PCB etc. Selling such a card @ the same price as AMDs "old" (considerably cheaper-to-make) midrange parts isn't economically feasible - and they won't do that unless Nvidias "competition" forces them to adjust their pricing (which, sadly, won't be the case for the next few month to come).
All that being said ... don't forget about
Barts Pro when looking for a ~$199 "killer" part
