True but they are producing to price point at the moment not performance segments. Back with the 2 series they struggled to get a card that could perform well enough to reach the price points as they were struggling with performance.
Now they have performance in hand and so are making the cards suite the price points that they are dictating.
If they make this card to good they shoot 5850 sales in the foot as JDFan has said. That's what I'm basing what is basically my personal opinion on, that and the fact that the 5850 is down clocked as well as having Sp's clipped to reach the performance needed to neatly fit this newer card into the price/performance structure of whole family.
Along with the performance of the 5770 I'm speculating (and that's all this is), that if they leave say 1280 SP's and keep the clocks up then its going to out perform its price point, like the 4770 did and which if we are all honest we hoped and saw no reason why the whole 5 series wouldn't do.
I wouldn't mind if it did but it seems that the days of AMD giving anything away for free is over. I hope I'm very wrong, maybe I'm being overly cynical but there you go.
Mactronix