We get flooded with emails from our readers every day. While we try to answer most of the questions, suggestions and criticisms, there just aren't enough hours in a day to reply to every one. But believe it or not, we do read every email, and take every comment seriously. The importance we place on this practice made it impossible for us to ignore the increasing number of readers complaining about an apparently substantial shortage of higher-end graphic cards in the US market.

We usually do not verify the broad availability of every product we review. It is just common practice in the industry that products are only made available to the media in markets where these products are sold. It is no secret that high-end graphic cards in the $400+ range are considered luxury products, and certain models are just not as available as the mainstream line-up.

THG reader Phil Sykes wrote to us saying that he had waited with "a card on order for two months", while "one or two cards popped up here and there only to vanish in seconds. How can ATI be given a crown for vaporware?"

Sykes' email and messages from other readers were in line with our own research. On July 20 we published an article indicating a shortage, a month after the introduction of Nvidia's and ATI's new generation products with the top-of the line cards. Radeon's X800 XT Platinum Edition (PE) and the GeForce 6800 Ultra were catching at least $650 and as much as $900 on eBay and online retail sites. Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme, which was announced by the company one day after ATI's X800 XT PE, never became available on the market; we only saw the card up for auction briefly on one website in August. A spokesperson from Nvidia claimed later that the card never officially existed, and that the name "Ultra Extreme" had been a fabrication of the media.

If we review cards and recommend them, we want to be sure that those cards are in fact available to be purchased in reasonable numbers in the market. After a few dozen readers wrote to us indicating the non-existence of Nvidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra and ATI's X800 XT, we decided it was time to go shopping.