Of course u are never going to have a card that is the best forever, I was trying to say that u might as well get the best as possible at the time, the 9600 series is good but still is already going out so its even farther behind and when the next series comes out it will be even farther, the 9800 series will still be kickin cards when the next series comes out because they can handle the new generation of games well and I truley believe that and cant wait with mine to see them. We see new cards come out twice a year that are a little better each time, look at laptop cards the best u could get was the 9600 pro turbo 128 (which im gettin this week laptop is being sent soon!!!!) and now they are coming out with the m11 in a few 17" laptops pretty soon the m11 is the new ati 9700 256 its not impresive because of the 256 but that it is 8 piped. Soon we will see that we will have 9600s in 12" laptops, the m11 in 15". and a 9800 series in 17" ones, so we will always be evolving but u have to focus on the present, and of course make sure that next jump in the series inst right after u buy your card haha, for now the 9800xt is the best gaming card and ati isnt coming out with a new one til maybe the end of this year. As for types of these ati's the best are Saphire Limited Tech, ATI, and ASUS but u will not tell a difference between them when they are not overclocked, Saphire is a great company and I suggest getting them, if u go from new egg make sure u get the RETAIL one not oem because it will be packaged by newegg and not in original box because the oem one is just a bulk box they got and then they package it, and the retail will be the box u would get in a store. Theres no need to spend more on the ati or asus model.HunterXI wrote:true, but you dont realize that eventually you'll be saying the same thing for the 9800 XT sooner or later... for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of money, the cheaper I can go while keeping performance is good...
but anyway, I didn't even buy my gfx card for Halo in the first place, I bought it for star trek, EF-II... which it sufficed for plenty at the time... and then I bought HPC, and found that it ran it fine, so thats my story...