A fantastic amount of I think in your post. This is fantasy writing at it's best. Not a single scrap of supporting data.
For one example, you wrote.
Some part of me thinks Polaris was designed as a low power efficiency part because AMD had no confidence in Global Foundries to allow them to make high performance silicon.
The last part is pure speculation on my part and a lot of hyperbole, but you can't but look at recent history and see nothing but a String of failure on the part of GF. We know that Samsung's 14 nm process is good stuff because Apple used it for their SoCs and it performs as well as TSMC's 16 nm process. AMD likely did want to target performance/watt as that was a weakness in previous designs so it makes sense to shore up that while evolving the architecture, but at the same time they'd have to know that it would be foolish to trust GF to deliver a working process without any issues.
The only other conclusion you can draw from what information we have is that Polaris isn't a good architecture or can't scale up the clock at all. That seems far less likely than GF failing yet again. ATI/AMD has a history of designing good chips, especially ones that can punch above their weight class.
One can ask, where is the supporting evidence leading to this belief? If you add some sort of evidence, you might be taken seriously. I see nothing, and every other I think by you has no evidence either. Why this is being said is very confusing to me. Is this forum a fantasy site now?
I could dredge up all the rumor threads or other posts that have shown up over the past several months, but that doesn't change that AMD was demonstrating working hardware almost six months ago, along with all of the other information to suggest that they had a lead on Nvidia, by at least a few months. Nvidia probably believed it as well since they seemed to rush out of the gates with Pascal with limited supply and what amounts to a paper launch, never mind that AMD might be much the same.
As I've stated before, you're not going to get any evidence to the extent of a CxO or team lead talking about delays or bad news, so at best you get rumors of setbacks that may or may not be true.
Explain to me in what world it makes logical sense for steady rumors to suggest that AMD is months ahead of Nvidia on 14 nm only for them to launch a month later even though they're launching a smaller die which by all counts should mean better yields as well as more supply in general when they've likely got the entirety of GF's 14 nm production capacity to themselves whereas NV has to contend with several other companies buying supply from TSMC.
As I said, either they're being really coy because they've got a big surprise with a 480X that is uncut and clocks much higher, allowing it to trade blows with the 1070, or they've got a 480 that's still a great value at $200, but is being held back by issues at GF getting their 14 nm process working. GP104 is almost half again as large as Polaris 10, but Nvidia is selling uncut dies, so where's the full Polaris 10? I've said that AMD could very well be sandbagging to throw off Nvidia, but the other side of that is the process has issues that need to be sorted out.
Fantasy is believing that somehow everything is fine when the scraps of evidence and rumor point to it being the opposite.
In the end though, I suppose you're actually helping AMD by saying these things and negatively influencing beliefs, as the full release will have a greater shock effect and more positively affect opinions and mindshare. Just like the proposed by a few $199 price, was also ridiculed and ended up having a huge positive shock value.
From what we know about the 480 I think it's a great value. Adored had a video that did some math to conclude that the 480 probably only uses a little under 100W based on some claims that AMD had made during their presentation. Assuming that's true, it suggests that card has some definite OC potential simply due to the additional power that can be throw at it, but it could be a case of an immature process limiting the true potential of Polaris 10 at this point if it doesn't scale particularly well beyond the stock levels.
I'll probably get a 480, especially if there's a $229 8 GB version, just because the performance/$ is too good and I'm gaming at 1080 right now, but I hope that AMD uses Polaris to fulfill their wafer obligations from Global Foundries and uses Samsung for Vega because the evidence right now points to GF making a pig's breakfast of another node.