Quote Originally Posted by [XC] Oj101 View Post
If you look at the Fermi generation, the GTX *70 and GTX *80 were GF 1*0 parts while the GTX *60 is a GF1*4 part. I think this may have been planned as a GTX 660, not even GTX 670 Ti.

This will probably irritate fanboys from both camps, but both companies deserve a bit of a knuckle-rapping. As good as Tahiti is, AMD got caught with their pants around their ankles this round, and Nvidia took full advantage by raping the customer. Look at the GTX 680, if you ignore performance there's nothing about it which screams high-end SKU. Four phase power, dual 6-pin power connectors, a PCB basic enough to have been designed by a first year engineering student. I can imagine the conversation at Nvidia:

Engineering: Behold, here's the GK104, a true successor to the 8800GT 512MB
Marketing: Holy , look at that performance! Do you KNOW what we can sell this for?
Engineering: $299? It's a mid-range card?
Marketing: So? $499 es!
Most of what you've said is right... except for that exchange.

Think of it this way... Marketing has little to do with the actual price of the cards and which cards get sold as what.

The truth is that the management of the company makes such decisions and when they see that their middle range card is on-par with the performance of AMD's high-end there is absolutely no reason for them to release it as a mid-range card at mid-range prices. If they're going to beat AMD in either case, why should they be doing it for $200 (or $250) less? Realistically, this will be one of the first GPUs in a LONG time that NVIDIA is actually able to sell at a huge profit margin without having to sell it as a TESLA or Quadro. Because of this, I hope, we'll see NVIDIA coming out with more less expensive GPUs with better performance... AND once the GK110 stuff comes out, I think we may see a STEEP drop in GK104 prices which would be good for everyone.