integrated watts or amp watts


Most "Stereophile recommended" integrated amps only have a rating of about 50-70 watts (creek, exposure, croft, arcam). Others like the Anthem and NAD have more, but separates (amp+pre-amp) seem to have more watts. I was told that for a budget of $1500 for this, I'd get the best bang for the buck with integrated vs seperates. The question I have is 2 fold..
1) Does Stereophile only "recommend" these lower powered integrateds because they're the ones with phono stages (which I don't care about)?

2) To have a really dynamic accurate loud system do I need gobs of power assuming the speaker is in the avg. 8ohm range with avg. 91db efficiency (not an electrostat, etc)
How much money do I need to spend? Is a 70 watt integrated only good for a small bedroom system, and separates needed to rock towers and the whole house? Just curious.
128x128labguy
Thanks, Rlwainwright. However,as i tried to indicate, most of my post was a follow-up to previous advisees.

Yes Wolf, paying for excess power at the expense of quality is not a good trade off.
A couple of integrated amps I've looked at in your range are the Rogue Audio Sphinx rated at 100 wpc and a used Krell s300 I. Two different animals I believe and dependent on speaker choice. Just a couple of things to consider. I don't know all that much about this stuff though...