Now that we have the full picture of how the graphics card market has shaped up for this holiday season, and given the absence of a true high-end next generation product, the question has become: Radeon HD 3800 or GeForce 8800 GT? For how much? And perhaps most importantly, when?

A few days ago TG Daily reported that according to various industry sources AMD/ATI was readying 250,000 orders of its new Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 cards, with some 150,000 more expected to ship by the end of the year. In the opposite side of the equation, Nvidia seems to be struggling with the almighty GeForce 8800 GT, after all the card was barely available for three days and now it's sold out everywhere (reportedly 40,000 cards were made available in the initial launch shipment). Now, because the GeForce is the better performing card, it may also end up being the more desired product and unless Nvidia is willing to step up, a lack of availability could continue driving prices up. This would work at ATI's advantage, of course.