DX10 graphics cards: NVIDIA 8800 GTX/GTS - Dilemma?

Finally, NVIDIA is the first to release what is meant to be the first graphics card for DirectX10, or WGF 2.0. The cards are, as many have suspected, dubbed 8800 GTX and its sibling, 8800 GTS. I wonder why it's not GT though.

This ain't gonna be a review about them much..well, actually, I just feel like I wanna talk about it. Why not? DX10 is around the corner, and these graphics cards cost $500 and above.

In my gaming life, I've never gotten myself the highest end card in any generations of product from...well, NVIDIA or ATI, except Geforce 256 DDR (hardly any competition that time!). I got myself Voodoo Banshee instead of Voodoo 2, Ti4400 instead of Ti4600, 9800 SE instead of 9800XT, X800GTO instead of X800XTPE and 7800 GT instead of 7800 GTX. Yes, I can't afford to get the premium one and I believe, a tad down performer is a better bang-for-buck for me.

Now, I am presented with these two babies, and with those price tags, I can't even judge myself getting a GTS. Yeah, I realised that price will go down eventually as more products appear, there's one thing that worth to note; the starting price for the highest end card is getting higher! That kinda sucks though, although it comes with a reason: G80 is one complex silicon, man. And it performs hell of complex functions...and bla..bla..bla.. But still, the bar has lifted, performance-wise and price-wise.

Then another issue comes up: power requirement, and I'm not even talking about SLI or 3-card configuration-SLI yet. Damn, things are getting tighter for average gamer like me to start thinking about getting even a GTS-level card.

I remember some remarks that NVIDIA made some times ago, but I couldn't find the link to it, saying that the next development for them to embark is to make the power consumption of a GPU goes as low as possible. I wonder when that is about to happen since what I'm seeing here is getting further away from it (thank God at, least in the CPU race, we are playing at 65W TDP right now!).