If you slot Cayman at $400 it has no price competitor and shouldn't compete with 5870.
6870, however, does. It's almost the same performance for less.
Exact. But if Cayman is slotted at U$299(Pro)-399(XT) price point and you dont have large stock how long should pass until it become vaporware or retailer once again rise prices, as they did with HD6870, caused by high demand and extremely low stocks.
So it would in fact serve nvidia better than now when their "limited offer" aka. vaporware keep its prices high but retailers still moves old HD5800 piled cards
And somehow i think even limited GTX580 aint so popular after all when at launch week they already have 10% promo discounts on insanely priced cards, thou they're already priced less than original MSRP $599.
Just hope AMD wont go for overfilling their pockets for next year keeping new Caymans limited and at high prices as they did with EG_Cypress HD5800 series, which most of their life were selling at higher than MSRP point
due to "yield issues".
Stock of previous generation cards is still too abundant. nVidia even mentioned how much it cost them to get rid of the 79xx cards once the 8800GTX was released.
Yep that was really poor nVidia decision to introduce 8800 series too early and rave looses on 7900
Even if they have to write off loses during G80 launch quarter, they easily split them by selling highly overpriced 8800GTS320/640. And as early execution sideffect they demolished competition performance wise to debris size for next 7Q in a row by promoting their dx10 implementation. And that totals to 3yr while twimtbp hype last. Aside to that they had problematic 80nm/65nm designs that degraded thru cooling down cycles and even pads break thru from
nv designed pcbs, but that's something well hidden under carpet and never recognized as design problem.
Now when we overlook the past, i'd say that was good execution no matter what some PR said about their losses (poor nv's
), yet measly one, on good selling and not nearly overpiled 79x0 cards, and even oem/retailers won their piece of cake by nv's discarding their old chips at popular prices.
But AMD today is nowhere near that excellent moment for nvidia. Unified shaders are four year old story and competition has strong dx11 cards. Early introduction of vaporware cards would only harm their rep, as nvidia's infamous Fermi(x2) did, while at the same time it would
reduce prices of HD5800 cards below value mainstream Barts. And paying off for retailers
virtual losses isnt something they want while current cards are still strong sellers.
That makes an assumption Cayman is starting at $399. It is also possible that Cayman starts at $299 (...)
Fits quite nicely as a price range. It also fits in with the pricing of evergreen and actually exceeds the launch prices for both the 5850 and 5870 by $40 and ?? forgot respectively
I also keep my fingers crossed for more reasonable 300$ pricing. But who knows, it might be just strategic delay for AMD to see how high they could price their cards. And maybe they think now when GTX580 isnt something revolutionary we could spice up our profits and put $349(Pro) and $499(XT) prices
"to better reflect on competition offerings". Sadly, that might be
true reason behind "The Delay"