I would be suprised if Fermi prices result in a reduction on ATI 5 series prices... it would need a miracle for them to be at a price/performance ratio that had any potential to impact ATI sales.
I really don't know why people think a likely 380gtx part at 448 or 512 shaders, and priced at £400 or more will have an impact on AMD prices. The 5870 should come down on its own at some point to be a bit more in line with the £420 rrp of the 5970, but the 5970 rrp won't drop(and eventually some uk retailers might actually sell them without then added £100 mark up), and the 5850 is well priced at £200.
THe simple fact is people expect 4870 pricing despite the fact that almost half the yields and higher cost per wafer means they realistically cost $100 more at least, thats just life.
If GPU makes do bring out next gen directly onto 28nm, we'll probably see a return to 48XX series pricing as those will be some seriously seriously small cores. But thats how it is with manufacturing, sometimes it works well and cheap and sometimes it costs more. Though I think it will be a long time before we see as bad a process again(my guess would be TSMC's 40nm fiasco won't happen again till we start to approach limits of new process's, 3-4 nodes in the future at least).
This is all ignoring that we don't know what "Fermi" is yet, 448/512 shaders on the top part, will either parts be available or will all this production end up in decent numbers but of mostly say 320 shader parts.
They need a paper launch asap just to let us know whats going on, even then I won't believe what they promise in terms of numbers available and prices, but specs will unlikely change.
I'm hoping for a paper launch in a couple weeks once they finalise specs after extensive testing of A3 silicon, and have some final coolers and pcb's and the like all ready to go for review models. Otherwise we have another 2 months of speculation, if that date doesn't slip at all.
