AFAIK yes, ATi have said they COULD have priced the 4870 far higher, not that they should have, it would have made them less money and its really that simple. Dell for instance would buy far more cards at £200, than even at £225. Because OEM's like to hit targets, so a £500 comp has an X priced gfx, cpu, mem, hdd, and when you go to £600, each part gets a £20 bump. But they'll always sell 10 times as many £500 comps as £600 computers.
ATi will just be kicking themselves in the foot going much above £200, because a 5870x2 then becomes a £400+ card which they don't want. the 4870x2 came out at the £330-350 mark and I wouldn't expect that price to increase much at all.
As for Nvidia, the problem is massive power issues with 40nm which are mostly leakage issues, get worse the higher the clock speed goes.
Nvidia core clock might be lower but the significant part of the core, the majority of the core, is the shaders, which clock in at between 1200-1500mhz depending on the part/overclockedness. IE Nvidia have a much bigger core(also more of a problem with current leakage) and a far far higher clocked core(most of it) which is why they are having much larger problems.
Their desktop dx10.1 parts(realistically laptop bits bodged to desktop parts) only have 24 and 48 shaders in the two models, the first 260 had 192 shaders, the 280 has 240 shaders, and the new parts will have significantly more again. As they are having trouble with high clocked(shaders) 24 shader cores its not a surprise that their possible 480shader newer cores are having significant problems.
But by and large TSMC have screwed them, yes Nvidia probably should have gone the efficiency cluster route with far smaller cores by now, but then TSMC screwed ATi on 40nm also. 40nm was supposed to be out, initially schedualed by TSMC for LAST OCTOBER. They made many official statements of delays way before that point so we knew by June last year it would never see the light of day before late into 2009.
Thats why we're so desparate for Global Foundries, there is NO competition to TSMC, they can screw up every day for the next 2 years and ATi and Nvidia have no choice but to keep paying them to make their chips. Since Global Foundries has started going after clients, broken ground on the new plant TSMC have tripled their R&D money for this year alone I believe, and that new GloFo plant won't be up and running for 3 years.
So TSMC have at least noticed if they keep screwing up in 3 years everyone will tell them where to stick it, even Nvidia are interested in having ATi/GloFo make their chips which should suggest just how much TSMC have messed up. Considering their increase in R&D and spending, lets just hope the next drop to 28(maybe 34nm) is much smoother.
