The thing is, I believe Nvidia has also made some mistakes with the pricing this round, which will make some loses for them too.

So, they release the GK104, they're mid ranged GPU, as a high end card, priced at 500$. Then what? Are they going to release their whole line up centered around that price? Does that mean that the GPU they'll be releasing as a replacement of the 680 in the mid-range will be priced close to the 7870? That's a problem, because the 7870 is already better than the 680 in performance/watt and performance/dollar. And, the worst part, it's already stripped of its gpgpu abilities, so that it will perform better in games (which also might hurt the long term viability of the 680, since probably in the future more games will use dx11's directcompute). On the other end of the line, when the will release the GK110, which is the big chip that was supposed to oppose the 7970, how are they going to price it? 700-800 dollars?

I think the 670/660 GPU was promoted to 680 status because:
A. Yeilds for the 680 GPU were incredibly bad
B. Temperatures, Power and Stability of the GPU were bad

And
C. No Competition from AMD at that level

nVidia is claiming that its just because of no comp. from AMD, i dont buy that as the reason.

the 600 series is already resembling the promblematic 400 series in delays, power consump., and temps.

but at least the 680s are quiet!

Overall, power is definitely lower when compared to the GTX 580. The GTX 580 had a full load Wattage of 394W in BF3. The new GTX 680 was much lower consistently. It was even lower than the Radeon HD 7970. Considering that the GTX 680 was faster at 1080p compared to the Radeon HD 7970; this means the GTX 680 is more power efficient compared to the Radeon HD 7970!


At idle wattage it is about on par with the Radeon HD 7970. The GTX 680 is much improved over the GTX 580.

Temps:
Temperatures on the GeForce GTX 680 are improved over the GeForce GTX 580. The GeForce GTX 680 was running at 83c at full load while performing faster than the GeForce GTX 580, which got as warm as 88c. The GTX 680 was a couple of degrees warmer than the Radeon HD 7970. However, as we all know, custom cooling will change everything. Suffice it to say, these temperatures show that a stock GTX 680 remains relatively cool to the competition, and improves upon the previous generation. It is right on par with its competition on temperatures.

I'm guessing when Nvidia releases their heavy hitter GPU, the price of the GTX 680 will drop to about $449-$479 and the newer card will come in at around $579-$599.

Regarding the competition for the 7970, the GTX 680 already does that...and beats it quite often at a lower price point. The 4GB GTX 680s are still a few months out and the GK110 will be setup to compete with whatever AMD has up their sleeve next. It's a vicious circle.

I don't get where you are seeing the 680 being problematic like the 400 series.

What do you mean the GTX 680 already does that? I don't think that responds to anything I wrote up there.

On the other end of the line, when the will release the GK110, which is the big chip that was supposed to oppose the 7970