OK but pushing 55nm GT200 as fast as possible will mean lower costs for NVIDIA and possibly a little faster clock. All these should make 'a new' GTX280 more competitive to HD48xx/4870x2 than current 65nm revisions.
The problem with that is what Carl B is pointing out.
Nvidia finds itself in the corner. They have a part that is selling much lower than they expected. Probably low enough that they are making little to no money on it. Nvidia isn't in a position to squeeze it's AIBs right now for fear they'll lose more exclusive AIBs.
Added to that is the fact that it's not selling well. Thus creating a situation where supply is, oddly enough considering the rumored low yields, much greater than demand.
Thus Nvidia is in a situation where it needs a part that remains competitive but is cheaper to produce, but at the same time it has an inventory of existing chips it has to clear out.
What do they do? If they bring out a competitive chip that is cheaper to manufacture and sells for the same price point they an get some margins back although it won't necessarily help with market share.
A result of that is they either have to continue selling existing stock at it's current prices or reduce the price to move it quickly.
In the first case, they erode the capability of the new chip to make money and it doesn't really move the old chips.
In the second case, they can now make much better margins or see a profit with the new chips, however they'll take massive losses on existing inventory. This might not be a bad thing however, as inventory that is just sitting there not selling is costing them money every day it sits there.
Nvidia isn't in a very enviable position right now. Facing the prospect of having to write off whatever inventory (and they make it sound like a lot) of G8x, G9x, and G2xx in order to introduce a new chip that is still competitive from a price/performance standpoint that is cheaper to produce.
I'm positive Nvidia will come out of this just fine. But in the short term, 1-2 years I'd expect, it's going to hurt them a bit financially. Whether it has the same impact as the situation ATI had with R600 remains to be seen. None of the products can be seen in as low a light as R600, yet ATI had far less inventory of R600 to deal with (when it released the Rv670) than Nvidia has stock of G8x, G9x, G2xx (when it releases whatever the next chip is).
Regards,
SB