Maybe not HD7850 has shown 15% improvement over HD6950 so after ocing it'll give 25-30% improvement over HD6950,so people will buy it if it's for 15k.
if 7850 comes out for 15~16k than we will see 6950 in 11~12k range but for me they will reduce the price for sure to lure customers into upgrade as we still have no news for nvidia 660 so ATI can dictate termsIMO if a 7850 is available at 16k, a new 6950 won't make sense for anything more than 16k-4/5k, though that is unlikely to happen. A 7850 OC is going to be like 30-35% faster than a 6950, this much performance difference is worth at least 4-5k+
Wow, this kind of went somewhere I didnt think it would go...anyway my main issue here, to add a bit to the point I was trying to make is simple. The top end Single GPU card from AMD for the 5 series was 5870. Then they went and screwed the numbering patterns by making the top end a 6970. The 6870 was a perf. card. I should have seen it coming then. Then we come to what happened on the current gen.
Anyway, I bought my first 6950 for 14k....and now the min. I see it at is around 18k...thats just stupid crazy for something thats been around for more than a year.