Not enough stress can be placed on the "at most", as some people seem to have developed insane expectations for what will be used in a $399 console.
mmmmmm.... no.
There's no reason they wouldn't use the arch from the 6900 series unless you think they buy off the rack GPUs and slot them into the console.
If it comes out winter 2012 that'll probably rule out this southern islands 7xxx series just because it seems to be designed for the 28nm process which by that point won't be a desirable tech for MS, not yet. If they push to 2013 then I could see them putting out a console on that arch easily.
it's true they won't put a crazy GPU in a console for production cost and power draw reasons but they will still most likely work with AMD to develop from the most up to date architecture they can use.
As an aside it's also faulty to try to extrapolate graphics performance from the percieved PPW on PC of a GPU.
I hope they end up being faster. I have a 5970 which the 6990 was only 20-30% faster than depending on the review site. If its only as fast as the 6990 not really worth the upgrade. Might wait and see what Nvidia does this time.
Yeah, I mean, I like my 570, it does pretty much everything I need horsepower wise (OCed a fair bit, not a ridiculous monitor) but the frame buffer on it is KILLING me, absolutely killing me.