First off, thank you so much for this write-up. Its sorta making sense now... Where did you find such a cheap price on a 9800? Im looking at a 9600 for about 79.99, since I havn't found anything better that even comes close to that price, and the min. requirement I have on one of my games is a 6600.
Serenity the 4670 outperforms the 9600GSO but a little behind 9600GT, the 4650 is close. All these guys are recommending Nvidea which I have but you will get a better bang for the buck with ATI cards I recommended. The 9600GT was deactivated by Newegg(???)Here is some raw data:
9400=DOG 9500=DOG
I feel the real slam dunk winner is the 4650 1g card I posted earlier. Although the performance numbers do not show here it will probably be close to the 4670 for $83. The ATI 3870(DDR3) which I owned, is around $100 and that outperformed em all and even the 4830 which is better, runs $100-$140 but now your getting to the price of the 9800GT. If you want to stay around $100 the 4650(1G) or the 3870(512 DDR3) is your best buy. Everybody recommends what they like but the numbers here do not lie. Remember, I own an NVidea GTX280 and I recommend one of these ATI cards. Reason: For the money, it looks like they win depending what you want to spend. It may be interpretation but you decide for yourself. Ask the others if they owned ATI and Nvidea. I would bet the house most only owned NVidea so of course they will not recommend ATI. I did like my 3870. I ran full anti alias at 16X perfectly. Ran 250-300 FPS with low anti alias and Vsync off in AH. Full boat(16X) vsync off, around 125-175 FPS. With Vsync on ran at my full refresh rate with no loss of FPS.
Death