Xmas Gfx Cards

I don't want to make a post about ATi vs. Nvidia, but I am going to get a new GFX card for x-mas, *yay*, and I would like to upgrade to a 256mb card, but not bust too much cash price range wise... I have an ATi 9800 pro 128 mb, which I plan to sell on ebay for like 50 bucks or something once I get the new card. It'd be really niced to have someone's opinion on the best suited card for me... I don't want any biased opinons, if you know what I mean (Ati or Nvidia fanboys)

The range is kinda small on both sides.

There's a GeForce 6600GT AGP coming out soon, but it isn't a worthwile performanceboost from the 9800 pro.
However, there's also nVidias GeForce 6800GT which performes very nice and is on a neat pricerange available.

On ATIs side there's just the X600, X700 and maybe X800 Pro, which are in a mid-level pricerange.

The X800 Pro is in most benchmarks a itsy bit faster than the 6800 GT from nVidia (not in Doom3 or other OpenGL based games).

Note that the entire X600 and X700 series are for PCI Express only. No AGP.

So the field would only be:
nVidia GeForce 6600 GT
nVidia GeForce 6800 GT
ATI Radeon X800 Pro

Benchmarks:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2...tml#3dmark_2005
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2...ti-x800-12.html

Video-Card Chart:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/2...s_guide-13.html

hope it helps a bit.

Thanks...what would a 256mb x800 run me? (cashwise)

a x800 Pro would be somewhat about 390 - 450$. (example)

a 6800GT will cut you a whole of about 390 - 450$ also (example)

finally, the 6600GT you can buy at around 230$ (note: only 128mb cards available) (example)