They can't be cheap. The current cards already have msrp of $199 and $229, so they are already pushing the envelope for mid-range cards. Adding anything and it should be more expensive.
I think they should try to put out as good a card as they can and price it at $299 or so. It will be faster than the 5850 and hopefully get a price war going
yea this is exactly what im expecting as well. given how well GF104 clocks, with some good binning they could get 5870 level performance out of GF104 if they wanted to, but more likely they will use those GPUs to put together a dual gpu board to take the 5970 down a notch and leave that price point to the remaining GF100 GPUs, since they will still keep producing them for quadro and tesla cards anyway. all this stuff about ceasing production of GF100 makes no sense at all when you consider it's the GPU they're using for tesla and quadro. my prediction is as follows: GTX475 will come out, faster than the 5850 but slower than the 5870, just like the 470 was, but with lower power draw and heat output, and much higher GM, making it more profitable. GTX480 will stick around most likely until southern islands launch as the nv single GPU halo part, and they will release a dual 460 selective binned part (with higher clocks) to beat the 5970 and take back the single card performance crown depending on which one does the job while making them the most money. when southern islands comes out, depending on what kind of performance boost it brings, we will probably see nvidia release a 485 finally (if needed and if they can) which will be a fully enabled GF100 core, and if AMD refreshes their dual GPU part then a dual GTX475 part along the same lines as the dual 460 to counter that as well. this of course is assuming all goes according to plan for both parties, but whatever happens, the final outcome will no doubt be a price war. there is also the possibility that southern islands will just be a midrange refresh to fill the gap between the 5770 and 460 (since the 5830 will probably be discontinued eventually), and if they do release a new high end part it will be at a later date. so far there's enough info floating around to back this up as a possibility, but if ATI doesnt refresh the high end and nvidia executes the way im predicting with GF104 parts, it will put a pretty big dent in ATI sales unless ATI can ramp it up enough on the marketing side of things.
this is all just speculation of course, but if it happens, remember, you heard it here first! given nvidia's luck recently i could end up being completely off base and everything could go horribly wrong, but its entirely possible anyway. another possibility is that nvidia goes straight for the crown with a dual 475 part (the way they did with the 275/295), and leaves it to their partners to release a dual 460 part on their own dime a la the sapphire 4850x2 from last gen
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