My 9800 Pro was delivered by the UPS man on Friday. I've owned a TNT, TNT 2, Geforce 2 MX, Geforce 3, and a Geforce 4 Ti 4400. This is my first ATI card. I had a Geforce FX pre-ordered, but because the benchmarks show that the FX just bearly beats the Radeon 9700 Pro(also the loud fan and the major power draw), and Nvidia keeps pushing back the release date, I cancelled my order, jumped ship and went with the 9800 Pro. I don't consider my self an Nvidiot, they just always had the fastest cards. Not anymore....my 3dMark 2003 score went from 1560 to 4653. I installed the latest Catalyst 3.2 drivers, and I haven't had a single problem with any games yet. Nvidia will more than likely reclaim the crown with the NV 35 which they say should be available in May, but didn't they also say the FX would be out by November of 2002 ?

I own 5 Nvidia cards, I must be a "real man".

Oh well, at least ATI was king for almost a year. We all knew Nvidia wouldn't just roll over dead. Hopefully after the introduction of the dominating NV35 the R400 rumors will start up.

we all know it, this is always what happens. The 9700/FX thing was the only exception in history that I can remember.

That's a good strategy. From the history of people moaning and complaining of the lack of feature implementation this is exactly what needs to happen. You only have to look back 2 years to see people complaining about the lack of hardware T&L implementation. People are also complaining about the lack of SSE2 implementation. Just because one company pays to have its technologies used does not necessarily mean that opposing technologies will not be used. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that optimizations take time (=money) and comapnies will not go the extra mile unless this will result in tangible results (increased profits). This should not be a problem for ATI as their hardware has great OpenGL and DirectX support. Perhaps the example is more valid when comparing Intel to AMD as AMD has traditionally held off on implementing new technologies that can easily be targetted by developers. Perhaps AMD will find the resources to get its X86-64 implementation some support, but it doesn't look good. Bottom line: why complain or oppose optimizations when this means that your hardware will be more optimally put to work?

This could turn out to be a bad move depending on the launch date of NV35. As some of you might know ATI has another R3x0 product lined up. It is unsure whether the multimedia enthusiasts are gonna fork out for a AiW 9800 when they may be able to pick up an AiW 9700 for less. AiW and the standard line are built on the same technologies, but it still requires additional assembly and management. I think ATI should have waited and unleased the next AiW with the next iteration of R3x0. Maybe I am wrong on the epxected release date for this part, but if it is as close I suspect then I doubt people will be very willing to purchase this AiW or the next based on the newer core. THe margins on AiW are probably good, but it seems ATI is a bit too enthusiastic about selling the best cards. Strange, considering the AiW has traditionally been less performant than the top product.