Lol at the people saying the rumours are nonsense. Of course the current price points will be replaced eventually. It has to happen sooner or later otherwise a graphics card will cost as much as a new BMW in 10 years.
Nvidia just tried to take the **** this gen due to zero competition.
£250 for 1080/vega 64 performance next year sounds eminently possible. In fact I completely expect it.
Exactly. The 4850 and 4870 kept the prices of Nvidia down, as the 9800GT and GTX were very reasonably priced (as was the replacement, the GTS 250). I have no reason to think these will be expensive cards. The last reasonably cheap Nvidia card was the GTX 670. Since then they've kinda had the lead everywhere, aside from the very high end when the 290 and 290x came out. If AMD can replace their huge honking cores with small diamond shaped ones (to get more out of a wafer) then there is no reason they can't just knock out a cheap GPU like they did with the 470 and 480 that performs well.
Like you say, zero competition, but AMD must be able to achieve 1070 and 1080 performance at some stage on cheap dies or we may as well all go home. But yeah, jokes aside, Nvidia have been holding back for ages so it's well within the realms of possibility that AMD can make GPUs as fast as those, given they were small dies and inexpensive for Nvidia all that time ago.
We just totally, totally got over charged for them due to the lack of competition. The last even remotely reasonably priced mid range GPUS from Nvidia? the 970 and 980 and all because the 290 and 290x were still competitive (even if they were barbecues.)