While we beat the guy up for his bad reviews, you have to give credit where credit is due. I think that those of us that condemn the PR machine from you-know-who, and seem to look for reasons to condemn many sites whose reasons for doing reviews are suspect - reciently, Hexus & Anandtech - we really need to give credit to these same sites when, in spite of the way they review, they reach the proper conclusions....
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=1907
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.html?i=1907
Narrowing down what to buy is never the easy part. Right now ATI is laughing all the way to the bank. Our midrange video pick of the week is the 9600 Pro, at under $150. Quite naturally if NVIDIA gets their DX9 act together and can regain some of the ground lost, we would consider the GeForce FX cards a bit differently. But if you had to buy a midrange card now, right now, Radeon 9600 Pro is the way to go; even if the 9600 XT is available.
On the high end market, it’s a bit easier to call ATI the better choice, but it comes down to which card. The 9800 XT is clearly not the best option, at $500+. The Radeon 9800 non pro would typically be our choice, but it’s almost impossible to find; and the Radeon 9800 SE is kind of a sucker card with no advantage over the 9600 Pro. We still like the 9700 Pro a tad more than the 9800 Pro, mostly because of the $80 price difference. However, 9800’s are certainly dropping in price and it will only be a matter of time before the 9800 is our pick of the week. This, of course, is assuming it doesn’t get any competition from NVIDIA.