Predictions predictions and predictions.
Nvidia might do another 480 to 580 launch. A 680 with gimped hardware doing 10% better than a 1000mhz 7970. Fixing that 8 months later with a fully unlocked 780. This time around, AMD will be ready with a 8970 that will equal and slightly beat the geforce.
This is the $64,000 question with how this node will turn out. We've all seen how Tahiti performs at 1200 core. It gives the kind of boost over a 580 that you'd expect to see nvidia's successor to that card deliver, sometimes even more, with the gains ranging from 50% to 80% over a 580. All that while thermals and power draw still being in the realm of reasonable for a high end gpu.
If the 7970 had released with those clocks people would of been going ga ga over it. So we know the potential is there and the performance is there. The question is how long until and exactly what will AMD do with the refresh. Will it just be a big overclock as stock clocks - likely the easiest, or will they a release a chip with some tweaks, more shaders ? and bigger clocks. 28nm is just in its infancy and we're still hearing TSMC is having issues and some of their customers cannot even get workin chips out of it yet, so there is more room to improve there. AMD's advantage will be clockspeeds imo with their smaller dies on their high end cards keeping thermals sane. Nvidia will have more trouble with clocks I think because they will do the huge chip jammed full of cuda cores.
So will clocks be enough to trump die size ? Who knows ?
Nvidia cannot be happy about their current gaming gpu situation though, with not having any 28nm entries yet or new skus to pr about while their competition does. Not to mention their highest margin part, the 580, being rendered obsolete by their competition. Every day they go without a high end 28nm gpu is another day another consumer buys a 7950 or 7970 instead of an nvidia card. Worst case, a loyal nvidia customer gets tired of seeing the 7970 benches kicking their 580's ass and decides to get a 7970, and finds himself happy in the red camp. Customer lost.
I'm sure they're trying to get something out as fast as possible, but I doubt they want to rush out with whatever they have ready again and get the bad flak for repeating fermi april 2010.