Why would the prices go up? Usually the prices drop between christmas and newyear, or atleast thats the case in Sweden.
If you want a 6800 card, be sure to check your computers power unit first. It needs to be able to deliver atleast 450 Watts to power the gc. If it doesn't ( and few does ) look for the Ati 800 card instead. very good gc with less hunger for power than the Nvidia card.
If youre going for a cheaper card, try to find a Ati 9800 with atleast 256Mb on it, or a Nvidia 5900/5950 with 256Mb. These are very good and are alot cheaper than the new generation cards.
Tip: if you experience lag in MMO's is to get more RAM for your computer tho. I have a 5950 with 256 in my computer and I experienced lag on it until I upped my memory . I had 512Mb and lag and have now 768 with alot less lag. Going for 1-1.5Gb RAM to reduce it further.
With MMO's the computer needs to cash alot of stuff and it usually makes the system swap memory to disk unless you have loads of RAM.
But I guess thats old news