Being unsuccessful offline, we tried our luck online by visiting several online outlets as well as eBay, a normally reliable source for finding rare products.

ATI's X800 XT PE was virtually impossible to find on the Internet until the first week of October. Since then, availability has apparently improved dramatically, with several e-tailers offering the product from manufacturers such as Visiontek and MSI. For example, we confirmed available cards on sites like Buyxtremegear.com.

However, these cards don't come cheap, and buyers should be prepared to shell out more dough than the suggested retail price of $499. The prices of available products ranged from $590 to a nose-bleed price of $960. However, we must admit that we also found a PE version on CompUSA.com for $499.99 - which again disappeared after a few hours.

The same research revealed only one store with a GeForce 6800 Ultra available. Atacom offered the card for a not very down-to-earth-price of $850 (suggested retail: $499). Other e-tailers listed the card as back-ordered, in the range of $580 to $685. Even Dell, which appears to have a steady supply of X800s and GeForce 6800s, listed the Ultra version at the time this article was written for an inflated price of $580 and a delivery time of about three weeks.

"I can buy these cards for less money on eBay," you may say. Sorry. While the auction site is usually a good source, we also found PEs and Ultras here at substantially higher prices than suggested retail. ATI's card was fetching up to $700, and Nvidia's card up to $650. Surprisingly, there were no professional retailers selling those cards, but mainly enthusiasts who were lucky enough to snap up one or two cards.

One seller of an X800 XT PE said that he was able to buy two PE cards and was intending to sell one and keep one. After selling one card for $749.99, however, he decided to sell the second one also and keep his "well-overclocked 6800 GT" instead. Another seller bought his PE at BestBuy.com after he had "hunted" for the card for several weeks, checking the website "six to seven times daily." It became available one day for two hours, and "it did not go on ever again," he said.

Lesson learned from our online journey: with patience, luck and enough cash, users are able to get a high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra or a X800 XT PE. The inflated pricing suggests very limited availability of these products, however.