How long before DX10 cards reach $300?

Id say vista release date + 3 months.

On a side note... i went to ATI's site (AMD now), and they have a little 'vista compatibility test' thingy.

I ran it just for kicks. Seems the bottleneck comes from GPU (duh). Having said that tho, even my work pc, 805D + FX5200 (vomit card), it said vista will run on med settings.

Seems if u got an 8xx CPU with 6xxx GPU u can run vista fine on max.

With that in mind... IF ppl know this they will be much less inclined to update for vista, causing lower demand, leaving prices for dx10 cards higher for longer.

When low/mid-end cards come out. Then we'll see sub-$300 cards.

Hopefully by the end of January-Febuary.

Until Nvidia comes out with a better version or ATI, to compete with the pricing. Right now there's only the 8800GTX and 8800GTS to choose from so I guess Nvidia will hold the price until then. I'm holding out for next year when I would finally upgrade when I will have a DX10 game.

What spec DX10 cards you thinking about ?

Before GeForce 8800 GTS/GTX performance level cards hit $300 (US$ right ?), it'll be around 18 months.

Unless you're talking DX10 cards with really poor performance (thinking GeForce 8600 GS here) by comparison - to a GeForce 8800 GTX that is - then you've got a 7-8 month wait from today I reckon.... for a $300 DX10 card that is actually 'worth' getting over a DX9c card performance wise.

Do consider that almost zero games will require DirectX 10 to run, nor will they require Windows Vista. That is just economic suicide for developers / publishers alike.

Manufacturing wise, the absolute earliest would be end of April 2007 run, and honestly I don't see them making 'low profit' parts just after ATI releases a 'flag-ship replacement' to their 'aging' Radeon X1950 XT part - which (the replacement flag-ship) is going to kick sweet ass performance wise, but it'll cost an arm and a leg.

Lower demand usually causes prices to drop... or production runs to be smaller. But in this case I can see where you're coming from, there is sense to the low demand (but demand is always low for _800 to _950 series video cards).

The GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS is a 'pre-Christmas' part, wait until the refresh around April using GDDR4 at far higher VRAM clock speeds + GPU core redesign. (Maybe on 45nm if very lucky, but I doubt it).

Radeon X2800 (or whatever they end up calling it) will be out March/April 2007 aswell, by my estimates. (Which have a history of being fairly accurate, give or take 4-5 weeks).

Noooo. The ATI DX10 card will be out end of January early February.
Enthusiasts will be wanting to be buying PC's around then for Vista. Not to mention game/software developers who will making and optimising their products on Nvidia cards. They can't leave it very much longer.

What? They haven't gotten above that already? gee... How are the duopolies of the world gonna survive...

And you expect them to go DOWN anytime soon? Looked at cpu prices lately? DDR2 RAM? MB's? Did I miss anything? OOps... HD's are still pretty good bargains... And there are how many HD MFG's... Oh... LCD's. And how many LCD MFG's...

Can we spell COLLUSION boys and girls?

My night to rant.

There have already been rumors that samples will get sent to card makers sometime in the first quarter next year, and if its true the $300ish and $200ish cards should start showing up sometime after that. But also this is a rumor and when they show up depends heavily on both Nvidia's 8800 sales and what ATI has up there sleeve.
http://www.digitimes.com/mobos/a20061120PD210.html?www.reghardware.co.uk

Yea, there will be lowers versions of dx 10 cards coming out in January. http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4891 Like in the article by dailytech, 9 of the new cards should come from Nvidia.