This might start some flaming, but after reading some of the reviews and previews and comparisons between the 9800 Pro and 9700 Pro, I've come up with this realisation as this card pertains to FS2K2:The best thing about this card: It will lower the price of the 9700Pro!I honestly didn't see a whole lot in the comparison I read that would make me want to spend $499 in the hopes of a slight increase. Maybe I've just been lulled by my GeForce 3 ti 200 that I'm going to replace with the 9700, but in the comparison I read, using "Dungeon Siege" that it said was CPU intensive (ie FS2K2) it didn't look like there was a huge performance increase. Would the 9800 make FS2K2 look $200 better?'Course this may be a moot point if FS2K4 (I can't bring myself to say Century of Flight) is optimised for the new card, but I haven't heard anything about that.Opinions?Lobaeux

Beyond stating that the price is $399 US, not $499 US (except the 256MB DDR2 version which won't be out for a while), I have no opinion.Its impossible to state an informed opinion without testing it with FS of course. Regardless, you are correct. The 9700 is plenty powerful enough for FS2K2 except at the very highest of IQ and resolution settings - no way to know about FS9.Take care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (y/N)

I hear ya, man - I'm not ready at all to pay 400 bucks or more for a video card only, so when I read through the review that was linked to AVSIM's front page yesterday I ended up with the same thought as you did - namely the hope that the price for the 9700 Pro will drop significantly. As you might remember, I'm planning for a system upgrade consisting of a new CPU/MB combo within the next few weeks and a new video card later this year. Thus, if I could have a 9700 for, say,

I am planning on buying it because I want minimal framerate loss when implimenting FSAA & AF. But, that does not mean in principle I disagree with what the reast of you have said.Robb

It will be awhile before the 9700pro will be down to $150 (more like $350), they might pull it off the shelf first or it would have to be so outdated (like the Voodoo3 cards) that there would be no other choice but to drop the price....

Elrond- you're right the $499 was for the 256MB version, and we're not sure how it'll work with FS9 true.Hopefully the price will drop more on the 9700, already it's dropped $100, and with the release of the 9900 it could drop further.Here's to good cheap upgrade parts!!Lobaeux

You can already buy Radeon 9700 Pro at $299, even at Best Buy.

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I buy a new computer just prior to the release of FS. My current computer I bought for fs2k2 is a P4 2 gig 518ram Gforce3. With this up coming release I think I am going to hold out on buying a new computer (at least until the 3.06 hyperthread is consider mid range). So I plan on just up grading my video card. Now since I usually pay around 3,000 for the system only paying 500 sound like a good deal.My question is wanting to buy top line will the 256ram 9800 pro allow for very good result? Not worrying about cost but just the fact that it offers more ram along with all the other spec.'s...Does the expansion of ram mean that it should be able to do more or does current 128 cards get fully used where it merits more ram for FS use?Kilstorm

The best thing about the 9800 Pro is the option for 256mb. I note significantly improved performance by bypassing AGP Texture acceleration (disbled in DX) with my 9700 Pro, but even so with huge aircraft high qual textures there is just not enough storage to keep all textures in the texture frame buffer. My hope would be for the doubled memory to be able to handle that. If so, I sell this nice 9700 Pro on Ebay and go for the 9800 w/ 256.Noel