Well the R600 chip is more powerful than the 8800 so it makes sense that it'd require more wattage.

Sooner or later we'll be converting out of the psu issue and more or less everything will be running on AC wall power. This is just gonna get to crazy.. The power amounts will grow to a point of obsertidy sooner or later.

Sure, but double the power needed for a fraction of overall performance improvement over the competition?

To be honest the this is nothing new because older Nvidia 6800 series AGP cards were using up nearly this amount of power two years ago so it's not really any surprise that some of the newer cards will need more power.

Also any gamer who would build that kind of system would have a quality power supply anyway. Anyone who has built a decent gaming rig should know you never skimp on your power supply and most of the newer power supplies are now reaching 1000watts for not much more money than the older 500 watt power supply’s.

I think this really is a non issue because like anyone with the money to build such a system would not be put off by having to but a better power supply. Whether it is actually worth building such a system well that’s another story.

my point being: a computer using the same amount as ... say an iron... The cost of the power supply isn't even coming into it: it's the daily cost of running a computer. Electricity prices are going up. And to be perfectly honest: it's time to find some more energy cost-effective way of designing hardware... as stated earlier: maybe go straight to wall socket powering...