"The question is more pressing than ever now that gamers are months away from the release of 'DoomIII' " ?!?!?! Reality check time. Doom3 is more like 6 months away, or over a whole generation of video cards away. By the time the game ships, the 9800 Pro & the 5900 FX will be around $220 each and will be considered barely able to run the game adequately! There were a lot of situational variable that biased the latest Doom3 benchmark, from imature drivers on ATi's part to some code optimization on nVidia's part...but the bottom-line is nVidia out-manuevered the hell out of ATi yesterday pure and simple. I'd take the 5900 FX's performance at Doom3 to be a great sign, but the 9800 Pro can run that demo a hell of a lot better than it did yesterday...just give it a couple of weeks. :)