Nice thread. These are my thoughts and speculations:

ATI:

The 5000 series 40nm process is now refined enough to produce a 1GHz chip that coupled with 2GB or RAM will stay within the PCIe electrical spec and deliver a catastrophic 1 - 2 punch to Nvidia. That would be a formidable marketing coup for ATI to be first to market a 1Ghz chip *AND* take over the 480.

ATI will do it. Simply for the market dominant position and bragging rights of having the fasted single GPU. No matter what's the manufacturing cost of that hypothetical card, they will be able to ask 500.00$+ for it anyway and push Nvidia prices down when they already have no margin left on these GF100 cards. If in the next couple of weeks it's technically feasible for ATI to jump at Nvidia's throat for the kill, why wouldn't they do it?


Nvidia:

Out of the chipset market, bump-gate scandal, wood-screw puppy, multiple re-bagged cards, miserable execution of the 6 month late Fermi, their general attitude problem and the fact they have pretty much alienated everyone in the industry confirm 1 thing: Nvidia is way too full of itself and need an ego / reality check, fast.

The gaming side of the Fermi equitation is an after thought at best. It's a GPGPU with a bolted-on gaming chunk. I really hope for their sake that the double precision floating point power, ECC RAM and CUDA SDK with C++ capability will be enough to save this monster of a chip. Putting 2 GF100 chip on a single card is out of the question, the clocks are already at their maximum. Short of introducing a 512sp version very quickly or solely rely on driver optimization, there is nowhere to go up for them.

What you'll see on the 26 is pretty much what you'll get for the next year or so. Nvidia won't be a force to be reckoned with in the gaming market until Fermi die shrink to 32nm. Problem is, they will have to face the HD 6000 way before that. Nvidia won't be able to absorb blow after blow like that for many more quarters. There's a limit to keep surfing on the wave of your dominant market position without sinking.


Conclusion:

It's all sad because based on the benchmark already available it's clear where we are going. I would have liked Nvidia to be not only competitive, but dominant in order to keep the prices low. I think they need to restructure, rebuild their bridges and corporate image. The first thing Nvidia needs to do is to fire Jen-Hsun Huang before it's too late.


Ramon