Ah…the edge of uncertainty arises as we head into yet another season filled with new arrivals and formats in the 3D video card market. Promises of newer and faster PCI-express and DDR-3 were more than enough to makes our jaws drop and our wallets pucker. As always, there are those that fear the costs associated with major improvements especially when it requires a new mobo to be compatible, but on the other side are the optimists. The optimists are the fanatics that can’t wait for new technology to be released so they can jump on the soon to be fading cards of last season. The 9800XT is on the top of the list for this group. Well for these program card buyers I have a shocker. It’s still months from happening and these cards are still flowing out the doors of resellers. The 9800XT was the King of the Hill and will be a higher priced commodity for some months. The good news is that we have the original ATI 9800XT to review and will provide a head to head benchamark comparison with the PowerColor version we recently reviewed.

With many different manufacturers producing similar boards, the battle has been tight. We look forward to seeing how these two cards compare and seeing who stands taller with the extra headroom. ATI has recently showed the consumer world they care by cleaning up their driver division and offering more tools and utilities in the Catalyst drivers. In fact, it has been said that ATI is now paving the way with its driver division. nVidia was once well known for its rock solid driver stability and after a couple of “optimization whoops’” they seem to be scrambling to get the reputation back. The newly announced NV40 has caused quite a stir and earned our coveted KOTH award. Unfortunately for nVidia, it was short lived and the X800XT Platinum edged out another victory and its seat as the King of the Hill.