I think that the $299 number is highly likely. AMD price 48x0 at extremely competitive prices because they HAD NO CHOICE. nvidia appears to be getting into a similar situation, they are going to price 470 and 480 at competitive market prices. AMD's strategy in summer 08 was so effective because they launched at the same time as nvidia. If nvidia would have launched fermi last fall and it had problems but was price competitive, they could have gotten away with it and done a respin later. However, since they've stalled for so long, they have much more pressure now to produce a slam dunk winner. Things are not looking good for nvidia or our wallets guys.
ATI can beat their pricing though, if logic holds.
A $300 470 assuming some weird RAM quantity (1280MB? The 8800GTS had 640/320) puts RAM cost marginally above ATI (1GB) assuming they use the same sort of RAM (speed wise, since both will be using GDDR5).
A 320-bit memory bus (I think this is what they are doing) puts PCB complexity higher than the 256 of ATI, resulting in one element which requires a more expensive PCB (more layers) (correct me if I am wrong)
The die size should mean the GPU itself costs more, due to yield, but then it depends on how harvesting goes.
If power consumption is higher, then that also requires more robust components, cooling etc, again increasing costs.
From a logical standpoint, ATI's costs should be lower than NV in my opinion, based on the differences between the two products, similar to the case with the 2xx vs 4xxx series (based on hopefully logical assumptions).
That means if NV do price at $300, ATI should be able to undercut them without too much of a problem in terms of their cost margins, although on lower overall sales and revenue, R&D hurts the total bottom line, but on a cost to make basis it doesn't seem like NV could hope to have an advantage.
With the HD4xxx series, ATI had a cheaper to make product [than the NV competition], which enabled it to price as they did.
