:thumbsup: A lot of solid points. The $100 premium for FE is already going to get wiped out on resale as soon as AIB cards hit the scene. Supposedly this Gigabyte Xtreme will come in at $650. It comes with 2x8pin connectors, VR bracket/HDMI ports for VR on the board, vastly superior cooling system, 4 year warranty, free HB SLI bridge, etc.
http://videocardz.com/60954/gigabyte-launches-geforce-gtx-1080-xtreme-gaming
Even if we make the argument that it's not worth waiting for the competition to respond, buying an FE card and not waiting for AIBs was a waste of $ imo. 1080 FE = No 0 dBA operation, hotter, louder, less features, less warranty, etc. and costs more! $100 Early Adopters Tax straight up.
$760 1070 SLI is only $60 more $ than a $699 1080 FE. That makes the FE a horrendous value for 4K or 1440p 144Hz gaming even without AMD's competing Vega card. 1070 OTOH is a great card for 1440p 60Hz. 1080 on its own sits in no man's land.
$650 AIB card that are better than the FE card in nearly every way also make FE irrelevant for most gamers using conventional gaming cases. Either way, anyone who thinks this generation will play out any differently is kidding themselves. Considering so many people bought the $699 FE 1080, it's going to be a repeat of GTX980 once AMD launches Vega. AMD's 2nd tier Vega card will probably make the $700 1080 look real awful. The only way I can see 1080 retaining its resale value is if NV launches GP102 at $799-899.
As you said, since NV has no competition, they could have even priced the 1080 at $749 or even $799. 980 launches for $549 in Sept 2014 and now AMD is about to bring close to that level of performance in a $199-229 RX480 less than 2 years later. I suppose anyone who is buying a $700/700 Euro 1080 at launch doesn't care about resale value so they know what they are paying for. For Canadians, it's even worse as the FE card comes out to roughly $800 USD after taxes. Everyone is free to spend on GPUs what they like but it's still $700-800 USD for a next gen upper mid-range card
within the Pascal generation stack. By definition, even without looking at AMD, that makes 1080 overpriced, just like the 680 and 980 were. The bad part is the precedent being set by gamers supporting the FE $100 premium and further buying next gen upper mid-range GP104 for $600-700. All of this is only lighting up the fire for NV to raise prices on GP102 even more. NV is smart as they have figured out they can push prices even more with each gen. If GP102 is $799, then GV104 can also be $799 since it'll provide superior perf/$$$.