Why are you baiting him to derail the thread?
Why did you actually derail without adding any useful content?
That is just an excuse and doesn't matter in the slightest. What matters is what the cards are selling for. Fact is, atm, both the 5850 and 5870 can be had for less than the 6850/6870, which makes their appeal somewhat diminished. Once they get whatever it is that is going on straightened out, then things will look different. The 6850 and 6870 are good cards, but at their current price points in relation to the 5850/5870 are selling for atm...they don't make as much sense as they should.
The 5850 and 5870 aren't actually selling at AMD's pricing "scheme". They are priced to clear inventory. My argument was not whether or not current prices are in line with expectations. My argument is against you're statement that AMD shot themselves in the foot. That just doesn't make any sense:
1) The 6800 cards debuted less than the 5800 cards; that was their "scheme".
2) It seems supply/demand have slightly increased the market value of the 6800 series, as they are currently above their launch MSRP. This isn't a part of their "scheme".
3) The 5800 cards are now priced to clear inventory, because the 6800 cards are here to stay and the 6900 cards will be their successor. It doesn't make any sense to have both the 6800 and 5800 in production since performance is so close, and the 6800s are cheaper to make.
4) AMD's actual pricing scheme, the MSRP of the 6800 cards, fall right in line with their competition: The GTX 460 and 470 MSRP.
So how did AMD shoot themselves in the foot? You might as well have said Nvidia shot themselves in the foot when GTX 465s were going for less than GTX 460s and offered identical performance, or how about some GTX 470s going for about the same price as a 460. My point? Nvidia didn't shoot themselves in the foot and neither did AMD. The "scheme" and the "market" change rapidly.
The architecture in Barts is unchanged from Cypress.
RV770 had some significant changes to its architecture compared to RV670. RV870 had some significant changes compared to RV770.
On the contrary, Barts is nothing but a cut-down/rebalanced Cypress core with updated UVD, DisplayPorts, tessellation engine, using RV770's memory controller:
"The main graphics engine which entails the fixed function stages of AMD’s architecture is for the most part carried over from the HD 5800 series without any significant changes but there is one major addition: an enhanced tessellator. Barts isn’t the focus of a fundamental architectural change in any way, shape or form." - HardwareCanucks.com
"Architecturally Barts is very much a rebalanced Cypress" - AnandTech
"We expect that you'll have a tough time telling the difference between AMD's Radeon 5800- and 6800-series GPUs on this schematic. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s probably because, from a raw specifications standpoint, the new Radeon HD6870 is essentially a Radeon HD 5830 with twice the render back-ends. Or, viewed differently, the Radeon HD 6870 has the same back-end as the 5870, just fewer shader cores." - Tom's Hardware
The chip, which is an entire package, is different (than Cypress), and none of your quotes dispute this. I never mentioned architecture and neither did you. And using phrases like this:
is not deterministic. You can add any number of "buts" afterwards and the statement can actually hold on its own, but the statement really doesn't mean anything. You can look at a situation in an almost infinite number of ways, and thus come up with numerous different ways to express it.
Also great job taking (some of) my post out of context. Don't quote the follow up sentence(s) or anything, which is actually relevant to what I said! smh.
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