Graphics Highend pricing and availability roundup

With the next gen cards just around the corner interesting things are happening in the high end market. The price and availability of the x1900xt-x and 7900gtx has dropped substantially, both can be had for ~£250-260 (try Overclockers and Scan respectively) however many stores are showing next to no availability and some have removed one or other of the cards completely.

The 7950GX2 is still widely available and the x1950xtx is fairly common with the cheapest x1950xtx going for just under £290 in Overclockers.co.uk offer of the week. 7900GTOs are appearing for <£200 with Ebuyer selling them for £179.99, they're not far behind the 7900GTX in the performance stakes and in SLI they surpass a single 7950GX2 (Two 7900GTOs can be had for £360 and the cheapest 7950GX2 is ~£330 from dabs).

Conroe being the chip of choice again shakes things up as the SLI chipsets (570 and nforce4) currently available for Skt775 are poor clockers and will hold your chip back so crossfire seems to be the way to go. However, the 975 chipset crossfire boards have proven to be a poorer overclockers than their single card cousins the 965's. 965's can manage crossfire with modified drivers but one of the cards will get 4x bandwidth instead of 8x (and the 4x slots seem to have limited compatibility). The clincher should be cost, in the face of forthcoming next gen cards, an outlay of £580 on a pair of x1950xtx's seems like money down the drain considering you'll need a good overclock and a 600-700W PSU to properly make use of it.

Single card ATI and relatively cheap nVidia SLI solutions seem to be the order of the day until next gen arrives.

[If anyone wants to contribute/correct anything feel free, it is a very limited and opinion based piece so don't take it as gospel]