That old 2008 price war had NV selling >550mm^2 512-bit GPUs for around the same prices as AMD 260mm^2 256-bit GPUs. And NV still did pretty well, and still gained marketshare.
Actually not only did they lose market share (2%) they also operated at a loss. Which wasn't healthy for the company.
Of course, they didn't have a lot of choice, at the prospective price points, GTX 280/260 didn't compare well with 4870/4850. It was significantly larger and more power hungry without much of a performance lead. Hence they were able to limit the market share loss to only 2% but at the cost of operating at a net loss. In hindsight I think Nvidia would have preferred to lose 5% or more market share if they had been able to maintain operating profits instead of operating at a net loss.
They managed to regain market share and then some once they got out smaller and more competitive chips (GF 9xxx series). You'll notice that later when they lost a lot of marketshare during 5870/5850 due to being late to market, they didn't go into a price war. They lost market share which certainly hurt but by kept their ASP high. This allowed them to keep their operating margins high, meant they could operate at a net profit. Lessons learned from the detrimental price wars from the previous generation.
GP 104 versus Polaris 10 is a completely different situation. Both chips are not only in different price bracket (like those chips from the price wars), but they are also in completely different performance tiers (completely unlike those previously mentioned chips). Nvidia has no reason to go into a price war and damage their operating margins or operating profit.
So do we see a return of the price wars from 4870/4850 days where Nvidia suffered net operating losses by engaging in a price war? Especially as Polaris 10 isn't a performance threat to GP 104, unlike Rv770. They'd do this by aggressively pricing GP 104 versus Polaris 10.
Or do we see the Nvidia from the 5870/5850 era where they lost market share but kept their high ASP and operating margins, thus maintaining net operating profits? They'd do this by continuing to sell through all of their inventory of GP 104 at the higher ASP.
In short, Nvidia would either have to be desperate (Polaris 10 eating significantly into sales of GP 104 despite the large performance discrepancy) or their yields on GP 104 would have to be absolutely horrible that they have a bunch of salvage dies that can't even go into GTX 1070. Neither of which I believe is likely to happen.
Regards,
SB
