I wish people wouldn't get their hopes up and work out why prices are where they are. Die size vs yield. Its looking to be bigger than a 5850 in die size, and almost certainly have lower yields(bigger die in almost every situation means lower yields, even if only a little, however an older non tweaked design and something a bit bigger but with a year of 40nm production tweaks found and added could theoretically be manufactured to a higher quality, but this is Nvidia, they won't).
That means base price, the core itself will almost certainly cost more money to make, maybe quite significantly, though its an exponential curve, cores will cost half as much if you can make twice as many, Nvidia had so few cores per wafer their prices were nuts, just increasing cores off each wafer by 30% will drop prices a lot more than that.
But realistically most parts of this card will cost more than an equivilent AMD card, it looks set to use more power, run at a higher clockspeed which from the way their shaders work, means high power usage, so its likely the pcb, heatsink, and gpu itself all cost more than AMD's, yet it will have less performance, if you think it will dethrone a 5850, or undercut a 5850 so much AMD will retaliate on prices you're wrong.
Likewise, people still don't get this, RETAILERS are charging you more for the gpu's, rrp is still £200 in the uk, if Nvidia can be competitive enough, which is perfectly possible with retailers selling at up to £250 for a £200 card, sales might finally drop so retailers actually sell the card for what its worth, £200.
The 5830 is a truly useless card, its miles off a 5850, and so close to a 5770 and almost matching a 5770 in some games in certain situations, matching the worst value card AMD have produced in 4 years isn't a feat Nvidia should be bragging about. Matching a 5830 on price or performance, is a complete and utter failure on every level, matching a 5770 for price/performance, or a 5850, would be an entirely different matter, and might make Nvidia a viable option again, for a good 2-3 months, still without their low or mid end out.
Nvidia are still struggling to get their upper mid end part out, theres smeg all chance they can do a new gen or even a slight refresh at 40nm, the cores are far too big already, so anything Nvidia can get out between now and October, will be obsolete between November and Jan. With what looks like AMD having a huge advantage on 28nm, Nvidia really actually do need a new 9800gt, a card that is fantastic, something above 5830 performance for pretty close to 5770 pricing.
Not for price performance, or anything else, more people will be a £100-120 range of cards than will buy £160-200 cards, infact they'd sell millions more, they need a decisive victory in performance in a cheap price bracket, its just not going to happen.
