I don't think so. AMD's small ball strategy has lulled nvidia into thinking that they own the single gpu higher ground forever, but with SI I think that you'll see amd getting a bit more aggressive. I fully expect 6870 to be at least as much of an improvement over 5870 as 5870 was over 4870. The only thing that we're going to see with SI (other than better perforamnce obviously) is higher temps/louder fans, though probably not as bad as fermi. In fact, we might even see the roles reversed this round with nvidia staking out a strong position in the middle ground and keeping thermals in check while amd goes for the best single gpu crown and sacrifices their heat/power advantage. If nvidia can play that card as well as amd has in the past then they'll have an advantage, though keep in mind that even at 400mm2 or so SI will still be quite a bit smaller than gtx 480.
It all depends. 5850 and 5870 could become AMD's midrange when SI is released. Depending on release schedule we could see 6850 and 6870 and nothing else for a few months (all conjecture at this point of course), priced at say $349 and $299, which in turn 5870 drops to $249 and 5850 drops to $199 and the corresponding 5770 and below get a mild price drop on top of that.
Who knows though maybe SI will bring out a midrange chip first or introduce a whole family at once and make the 5870 and 5850's EOL and disappear.
It is also conceivable that in the 7 or 8 months Nvidia struggled with Fermi I, much of which involved process problems and not just design problems, was working on the next generation. So we could see "Fermi II" sooner than people think.
As to the power issue, AMD has a lot of room before it meets 470/480 power levels. I would imagine we will see them increase in power a bit but stick to making a 6970 type card in order to try to maintain the performance crown on a single card.
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