I'm aware they are available from some places. I just find it odd that I bought my 9700 Pro and got one of the first shipments, then saw it on store shelves here a month later. The xX00 and 6x00 solutions came out in the spring, and the shelves here still seem to proclaim the 9800 XT or 5950 the best you can buy. Now I know it's not as critical that high end gaming cards make their way into the mass market stores, but it still does help the impulse buyers to have them there. Prime example, my friend bought a 9600 XT over ordering a 9800 Pro online for the same price because he had to have the card that day. Another impule buying friend bought a 20GB iPod, as he couldn't find a Karma in the local stores.

The whole PCIe bit has be a but puzzled too. Sure, for the high end cards it makes sense with that market. But why are the midrange cards, like the x700 and 6600 launching PCIe first? I know several people at work not willing to pay $400 (or close to $700 for a PCIe x800 XT), so they want the midrange solution. They also don't want to upgrade to a PCIe motherboard yet, so they are stuck waiting.

This whole generation seems to be a mess of confusing benchmarks, and in some cases, lack of gains for spending $400 or more. So, I'm holding off even longer to build a new system then I thought. The other end of my decision to wait is the lackluster jump in CPU speeds over what I bought two years ago. I do keep my ears open though for an announcement from Shuttle about a PCIe enabled AMD Athlon 64 solution. Popular rumor has it that ATI might ship the first PCIe chipset, beating the Nforce 4. That could be an interesting turn in that market battle.