[DaveSauce]

I plan on upgrading my video card in the near future in order to take advantage of all the new games coming out.....I found Splinter Cell a bit jerky on my GeForce3 (ran great, but it was on the border between smooth and jerky, and I'm sure the new games coming out will push it).

Anyway, I've had my eyes on the 9800pro 128 for a while now, waiting for the price to become decent. I have heard that the 9900 is going to be released pretty soon now, and my hope was that it would bump the 9800 pro down to maybe the 300-320 range....

Anyway, am I hoping too much? I'd love to get my hands on a new video card, but I can't be spending $400 on one, heh....i'd love to get a hercules card, but they come at a premium usually. I suppose the next question would be what kind of 9800 would you recommend?

any help would be appreciated...

edit:

BUGGER, I thought I was in the ATI section......could a mod move this please?

[Claw13Angel]

you get what you pay for, if you want the best then buy it or go to ebay and get one around $330 shipped

[Speed_Mechanic2]

If your not put off by a little bit of "setting-up". You can purchase a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Non-Pro and have it running default at Pro-speeds with Radeon 9800 Pro performance in no time. Simply buy a Sapphire Radeon 9800 Non-Pro OEM from New Egg for $249, and flash it with a Pro-bios, or just overclock it to Pro-specs (380/340).

You can also already purchase a Radeon 9800 Pro OEM for $295.

[metra]

Buy it after you get D ]|[ or HL2 (the games youre probably waiting for).

[Flashfx2]

If you screw up a bios flash on a video card is their any chance that it is not recoverable?

[Mustanley]

It's very easy to reload the original bios if you have a spare PCI video card. If you don't have a spare PCI vid card , you can make a DOS boot disk with the flash program and the original bios on there, then call the flash program inside the autoexec.bat file. It will flash automatically, though yopu won't be able to see it happening.
Honestly, I haven't read of anyone messing up a 9800np trying to flash it to a pro.

[AMD_Me]

I got my VisionTek 9800 pro from compusa for $299 ar. Love it. Buy it right after the 9900s would be my suggestion, they should be into the $250-300 range for a new one then.

[manhart]

Let's see, you could buy a new Sapphire 9800np and flash the bios to a 9800p and spend at the most $250. OR you could wait a couple of years and pick the same card up at a garage sale already flashed for $20. Waiting for lower prices just means you are getting behind the power curve that much more. If you are really concerned with price, buy a 9600p and overclock it! It gets good performance, atleast mine does!

Prices change so rapidly, it's not worth waiting for the 9800 to go down. They might never go down, just look at the 9700! It's price hasn't gone down much in the last couple of months because ATi stopped manufacturing them and concentrated on the R350 core cards. Now you can buy the above-mentioned Sapphire 9800np for less than a brand new 9700p!