I highly doubt $250 for a card that can OC to the performance of a bit less than the 580 is overpriced.
It doesn't move price/perf anywhere. If you don't think new nodes and architectures ought to move price/perf forward, then I guess you'd be happy paying $1000 for an Athlon II X2 250 or something because it compares favorably with a Pentium III's price/perf. Pfft. New nodes and architectures SHOULD move price/perf forward because the new chips are smaller and cheaper to make (after they work the kinks out, anyway). I can't believe consumers like you are letting off companies so easily for 28nm GPUs.
An overclocked 7850 is only a bit faster than a GTX 570 at stock, and closer to the GTX 570 (stock) than the GTX 580 (stock).
An OC'd 7850 would thus be about 16% slower in BF3 than a stock 580 at 1200p:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5625/...-7850-review-rounding-out-southern-islands/11
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/26.html
To quote Anandtech's conclusion: "As for the Radeon HD 7850, things are not so clearly in AMD’s favor. From a power perspective it's by far the fastest 150W card you can buy, and that alone will earn AMD some major OEM wins along with some fans in the SFF PC space. Otherwise from a price perspective it’s certainly the best $250 card you can buy, but then that’s the catch: it’s a $250 card.
With GTX 560 Ti prices starting to drop below $200 after rebate, the 7850 is nearly $50 more expensive than the GTX 560 Ti. At the same time its performance is only ahead of the GTX 560 Ti by about 9% on average, and in the process it loses to the GTX 560 Ti at a couple of games, most importantly Battlefield 3 by about 8%. AMD has a power consumption lead to go along with that performance lead, but without retail cards to test it’s not clear whether that translates into any kind of noise improvements over the GTX 560 Ti. In the long run the 7850 is going to be the better buy – in particular because of its additional RAM in the face of increasingly VRAM-hungry games – but $199 for a GTX 560 Ti is going to be hard to pass up while it lasts.
Of course by being in the driver’s seat overall when it comes to setting video card prices AMD has continued to stick to their conservative pricing, both to their benefit and detriment.
The 7800 series isn’t really any cheaper than the 6900 series it replaces; in fact it’s probably a bit more expensive after you factor in the rebates that have been running on the 6900 series since last summer. But these prices stop the bleeding from what has been an aggressive price war between the two companies over the last 3 years, which is going to be of great importance to AMD in the long run.
Nevertheless we’re largely in the same situation now as where we were with the 7700 series: AMD has only moved a small distance along the price/performance curve with the 7800 series, and they’re in no particular hurry to change that. But if nothing else, on the product execution side of things AMD has done a much better job, getting their old cards out of the market well ahead of time in order to keep from having to compete with themselves. As a result your choices right now at $200+ are the 7800 and 7900 series, or last-generation Fermi cards.
Otherwise we’re in a holding pattern until AMD brings prices down, which considering Pitcairn is the replacement for the Barts-based 6800, could potentially be quite a reduction in the long run."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5625/...-7850-review-rounding-out-southern-islands/20
Prices will fall on these 28nm cards. They are already falling for the 7970 and the cascade will continue, particularly as Nvidia launches more 28nm GPUs. If you absolutely gotta buy now and plan to hold onto the card for 2+ years, the 7850 isn't that bad of a buy, but those who can wait or who want something to tide them over for the next couple of years until a more substantial upgrade could probably make do with a $190 GTX 560 Ti.