Now that right there is truly next generation. Looks amazing, but no doubt will be incredibly difficult to find.

Probabaly for scraps, or he dropped a zero by accident. I somehow flogged a broken GT9800 for £35....and I clearly stated it was broken as well...

OR

1) AMD has class leading price/performance at nearly every price level on the desktop from $80-$500. So why rush HD8000 series if HD7000 series is still selling well?

2) AMD is working on re-writing the entire memory management of GCN parts. Since HD8000 series is rumored to be based on GCN 2.0, it would make a lot of sense to optimize GCN 1.0 fully before launching the next part based on GCN 2.0. There is probably still more performance to be had from GCN. Since HD7970 launched at $550 but the drivers weren't even near optimized, AMD had to drop prices precipitously after the 680 launched. I don't think they want a repeat of this with HD8000 series, which means they still have work to do on the driver side before launching that series. 

3) How do you "delay" something that was never announced? HD8000 "Sea Islands" parts launched for mobile. AMD never actually announced any plans to launch any new HD8000 desktop products before Q3 2013. Everything was just a rumor:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1358209/wccf-amd-confirms-radeon-hd-8000-sea-island-delay-says-hd-7000-series-to-remain-primary-focus/150

Current AMD roadmap doesn't have any replacement for HD7000 desktop cards in the DIY market:

4) GTX700 series are also rumored to be delayed to Q4 2013:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Radeon-GeForce-Delay-GPU-Next-Generation,20838.html

The Titan could just be a niche enthusiast's wet-dream card that won't even be called GTX780. No one cross-shops HD7970/7970GE with the Titan. 

5) TSMC accelerated the introduction of 20nm node to Q4 2013/Q1 2014:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4371203/TSMC-to-offer-only-one-process-at-20-nm

http://eetimes.com/design/eda-design/4398190/20-nm-open-for-design-says-TSMC

6) Since HD7970Ghz is already 10-11% faster than GTX680 on average, even if a $499 GK114 launches with 25% more performance than GTX680, that would only make it roughly 14% faster than HD7970 Ghz. AMD could just lower the price of the HD7970Ghz to $349-369 and keep waiting until 20nm node. Alternatively they might have needed 6 more months for 28nm node to mature and possibly a redesign of the HD8000 chip to improve its overall performance, performance/watt. It doesn't necessarily mean it was canned. 

7) The transistion to HD8000 series could be more hassle than its worth due to current 28nm node prices. Maybe AMD is waiting until 28nm node prices come down before doing a spin of an entirely new HD8970 chip. This also aligns nicely with 28nm node maturity even more in terms of leakage over the course of 6 more months.

Titan's launch appears imminent now. Perhaps right before PS4's announcement to showcase Crysis 3 and Titan to lure in console gamers to the PC.

No zero dropped, Bought it boxed and new from a local (small) electronics store here in Japan.

I did ask (after paying and putting it in my backpack) why it was on sale (was originally listed at 64,000), and they said most of the pc equipment wasn't selling (pc gaming isn't a big thing in japan, at all), so they were getting rid of their entire stock.

Picked up two i7 3770K's for 10,000 yen a pop too.

O_O

Will you do exports with commission? That's phenomenal. 

Tachikoma, grats on those deals! That's a smoking price on that 3GB GTX580. GTX680 is just 35% faster and costs $440+. You got a card with just 35% slower performance for 8x less cost! Amazing. 

I wonder why they keep stocking PC components then if they barely sell in Japan. It seems they keep losing $ on them. 

No, but it's Flop performance is over NINETHOUSAAAAND.

I slapped it in my backup pc along with the other two 3gb gtx580s i had originally gotten free from the manufacturers, so its quite a beast now for less than 100 dollars, even gives mu main sli gtx680 a run for its money

That is a great deal on the card, but it wasn't new. The sticker on the box clearly says that it's "used". It's still a great deal though.

I'm going to be selling my 1.5gb gtx 580 cards for much more than that individually. Still trying to decide if I should get one or two 7970 cards.