The Future is Now.

GTX 580 on top, apparently a 6970 on the bottom. Can YOU see the difference?

I don't need 2 Ati cards to run more than 2 monitors...

I was specifically referring to the board layout.
NV uses 128MB ram chips and AMD uses big honking 256MB chips.
Also the NV board needs about twice the capacitors and twice the voltage regulators.

Less stuff on the board = teh cheap!

Not necessarily. The BIG cost is always the ASIC, that application specific integrated circuit that's at the heart of the design. Off the shelf stuff is generally pretty cheap as it's mass produced for multiple markets. As far as capacitors go, AMD may have just used pricier VRM's that don't require large bulk capacitors while Nivida picked cheaper ones and used cheapo electrolytic capacitors to provide stability. Without actual part numbers, actual cost is hard to guestimate.

Less stuff on the board means less tracers, which may mean less layers. I'd rather they used a lesser number of more expensive components than the other way around.

The only products I've regularily seen itemized for price are Apple (ptooey) products.

Component count doesn't really have all that much to do with the number of layers required on a PCB. Internal layers are often power planes anyway.