[skool h8r]

Cheapest 9800GTX i can find is £200 which is about $400USD. Personally, unless you're going for the best 3DMark scores or plan on running Crysis with at 1920x1600 or other HD resolutions, there's no real reason to go for anything other than an 8800GT. Pretty much an all-singing all-dancing card that's ideal for the enthusiast.

Personally, with Crysis already having built-in edge AA that's NOT very system intensive but does do a good job, you don't need antialiasing enabled in setting, which frees up a lot of resources for other image enhancements, such as POM which is like the Parallex Mapping that was used in FEAR, where 2d textures get some enhancements to make them look very 3D, and it does make a difference. Also allows you to dedicate some of that power to Sunrays which make a massive difference to the quality of the game.

The reason it performs so much better in games than the 3850Pro did isn't down to just the memory, it's down to having a ~3.5 - 4x higher Gigatexel per sec count, in exchange for a slightly lower Gigapixel per sec count. Games tend to use texture effects more than they use pixel effects. At stock, it's got lower bandwidth, but it uses the bandwidth it has much more effectivly than the Ati cards do.

All in all, 8800GT is one of the all time great cards, similar to the way the 7800's were welcomed with open-arms, except this time round, it's much more affordable to the every-day person.