Agreed - the capabilities of a specific mining gpu must outweigh the lost scrap value since one cannot sell it on to the gaming or visualisation markets
Until that time, gaming cards will be the card of choice I believe simply due to their scrap value being taken into account when calculating lifetime ROI
Perhaps another point to add that would be desirable: compact size. The smaller the card the smaller the rig and the smaller the rig the more rigs one can fit into the space - thereby reducing the space a farm takes up (heat dissipation of course would need to remain unaffected.......)
The new mining specific GPUs are said to be 2x faster in mining for ethereum almost 60 MH/s for $350
https://hothardware.com/news/nvidia-allegedly-readying-pascal-crypto-mining-gpus-ethereum-bitcoinHmm, the 1080 variant is stock clocks, I don't see it doing more than 25MH, certainly no more than 30MH/s for Eth. The 8x rig in the slide listed at the bottom is doing 200 with 8 cards which is 25MH/sec per card.
My $0.02 says there just isn't going to be a substantial change in hashrate on any of these cards, provided they even exist. Like the OP I wouldn't be buying them anyway, as I may game with one or resell it at some point.
I read they won't just retail these to anyone either, that they would be going out in large quantities only. This also seems...odd.