I'm sorry but that example is little bit too much cherry picking. 560Ti 448-edition is a limited time special edition card, that is 560 in name only. Much proper name for it would be 570 LE or something like that. It uses the same 520mm2 die that is in GTX 580 and GTX 570, other 560 cards do not. It's more expensive than the regular 560s as well. It's just a handy way for nVidia to sell chips that didn't quite make it to be in the GTX 570. I'm sure no-one meant that model or Evga's GTX 560 2win card either, when they were talking about the GTX 560.
Imo the regular GTX 560 is an upper mid range card that has pretty good value proposition.
Or entry level high end...
Even looking at the normal GTX 560 the mainstream technical press refers to this product as Performance -- not mainstream. e.g.
A recent example where Tom's was looking at a leak for the upcoming NV Kepler architecture and how it fits into the current framework and their use of Mainstream, Performance, High End, and Flagship (they didn't mention Entry level but that is the level below Mainstream; I used the current gen and how they slide across, some straddle, I think they overshoot at the top omitting the Kepler dual-GPU solution, aka Enthusiast, and the 590 itself was a later product, but that is picking at nits and gnats):
* (Entry Level: On-die/IGP GPUs; 520M 64bit; not mentioned in that article)
* Mainstream: 48 core, 128bit
* Performance: 336 core, 256bit
* High End: 480 core, 320bit
* Flag Ship: 512 core, 382bit
* (Enthusiast: SLI; inferred)
As you can see from their own graphic there is a HUGE drop from the Performance to the Mainstream and the 550TI GPU (192 cores, 192bit) disappears.
Looking at the market segments by die:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_500_Series
520: 79mm2, 29W, 155GFLOPs, 64/128bit, 48 core
530: 116mm2, 50W, 268GFLOPs, 128bit, 96 core
550: 238mm2, 116W, 691GFLOPs, 192bit, 192 core - Also 545
560: 360mm2, 170W, 1263GFLOPs, 256bit, 384 core
580: 520mm2, 244W, 1581GFLOPs, 384bit, 512 core - Also 570, 560 v.2 (320bit for both)
590: 520mm2 x 2, 365W, 2488GFLOPs, 2x 384bit, 1024 core
* Entry Level: On-die/IGP GPUs; 64bit bus models
* Mainstream: 520
* Performance: 530
* ? 550
* High End: 560
* Flag Ship: 580
* Enthusiast: SLI
As you can see there is even a distinct manufacturing/marketing tier (550) that doesn't fit into the chart which only pushes the 560 further away from mid range--which makes sense because logically it seems odd to have a 520mm2 chip as "High end" and a 79mm2 chip as "Low End/Mainstream" or even "Entry Level" and then have a 360mm2 chip "in the middle" especially when you consider the 360mm2 chip is clocked faster (882MHz vs 772MHz) and the functional units (384:64:32 vs 512:64:48) it clearly a jump well over the middle point.
And then there are the pricing brackets that get complicated due to slotting and binning (e.g. you may have a surplus of 580 chips with disabled units that become 560 models).
I don't think we are necessarily disagreeing, but what homer and I were taking issue with was pushing a 560 style card down into the mid range or as some were calling it mainstream market segment. It just isn't that sort of chip. I can see where hardcore PC gamers would see it as such, but that just isn't how these products are slotted.
That is all we were saying--I am not sure when roughly 80% of the performance (give or take) of your top single GPU solution becomes "mainstream" or "mid range" I think a fresh look of what the GPU landscape really looks like is in order. But I agree, a 560 is not in the same class as a 580, but homer was right to insist that there were more segments and categories in the market than others were allowing.
