The 9700 Pro AIW dropped to 399 (limited time offer) @ CompUSA last week. The 9700 Pro is still 319.20 at Microcenter until 1/26. No rebates, just instant discounts. That indicates ATI wants to move mass quantities of product in a little amount of time to curb the "I want speed right now, not in March" crowds, it also means they want an large R&D cache to counter NV35, since it seems the 9700 already has stolen a good deal of the FX's thunder. It may also indicate they're testing new price points. As far as I can see at the Fairfax, VA Microcenter, the 9500s and 9700s they're selling flew off the shelves. There's one lone 9700 Pro in the display case. I'm not a fanATIc or an nVidiot, but ATi is in the stronger point here. They've got a much more diverse field of products out and they're taking it to nVidia in the pricing category. ATI is saturating the market with product while nVidia is starting to refer to the 8X Ti4200 as the Ti4800...thank god people are generally stupid and nVidia spends so much on marketing.
Pure conjecture starts here (the dearth of nVidia news is simply due to the fact that they'll be doing literally nothing between now and March 9th):
I expect the MSRP of the 9700 Pro AIW to drop to 349 by March, and I expect the 9500 Pro AIW (I'm only assuming there WILL be one simply because the 9500 is one of ATI's most successful cards ever), will probably drop the price of the 9700 Pro to 299 MSRP. I firmly expect ATI to have a 256MB 9700 Pro with a higher core and memory speed (still using DDR-1, mind you, the inclusion of DDR-2 would require a core-logic change PLUS raise the price to GF FX Ultra levels).
ATI cannot debut a 256MB DDR 9700 Pro with less than the current 2.3ns RAM. To keep the 128MB Ti4200 competitively priced, nVidia had to ramp down the memory speed. I foresee the same thing on a 256MB R9700 Pro unless something revolutionary happens to memory pricing, which has remained relatively static the past year, and crises in the Asian Rim won't help matters much.
The non-Pro 9700s will probably slowly phase out, becoming the ATI equivalent of the now harder-to-find GF4 Ti4400s and Ti4600s. Companies might buy the non-Pro 9700 chips from ATI in bulk and equip them onto 229-dollar "value enthusiast" cards. On nVidia's side, I expect GF4MX cards to become extinct fast as the 8X AGP Ti4200s go on firesales around the country. nVidia doesn't have the luxury of gathering money from card sales directly, since they sell the chips to cardmakers (except this will be the first time they directly supervise a board's initial release as a first-hand party)...thus, they get much less per card to invest in future tech.
Also, we're still in a recession, and a projected 200 billion dollar war (the cost of the WAR, not the rebuilding of the destruction) isn't going to help things. The massive presence in the Gulf is going to stress the freight industry, and assuming we're rebuilding a shattered Iraq in March, getting GeForce FX cards to market will be a very very insignificant priority. Which means they'll be using air freight, which additionally means lower initial release numbers and higher transportation costs. The skinny of it: it's going to be VERY hard to find GF FX cards. This year's controversy might not be Best Buy making the online world's highest-profile pricemistake, but rather pissing off thousands of customers who preordered cards not being able to get theirs on release day...
Everything's connected. Tough few months ahead, if Bush isn't pulling the biggest military rope-a-dope in history, poising an overwhelming force on Saddam's doorstep simply to persuade Arab nations to take care of the problem themselves. Even then, we've said we'd "enter the country in a sheerly 'administrative' faculty" to help them get off to a good start.
So, in a nutshell, I expect the AIW 9700 Pro to hit 399 MSRP in mid-Feb, along with the drop of the 9700 Pro to 299-349 MSRP in preparation for a 349 dollar 256MB 9700 Pro (using memory in the 2.8ns range to save money). I also see the introduction of a 9500 Pro AIW dropping the price of the 9500 Pro down to scorchingly attractive price levels.
For nVidia - I see lots of cheap Ti4200 8Xs on the horizon leading up to the FX's intro. That's about it. I'll check my score in a little over a month