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When future computer enthusiasts look back at the development of GPU's over the last five years, it would be impossible not to see the legacy that began with the king of performance, the 8800 GTX. Will the 9800 GTX have the same legacy as the 8800 GTX? Quite simply: no, it will not. While the 8800 GTX was a card that hit the hardware scene like a meteor, the 9800 GTX is going to touch down like a stealth jet on a runway. But this isn't to say anything negative about the 9800 GTX at all -- instead of creating an all new legacy, the 9800 GTX continues the legacy introduced with the 8800GTX, and in doing so becomes as a worthy of a successor to the GTX label as any GTX ever was.

It's a weird situation to think that the 9800GTX is going to become available for the around the same price that 8800GTX cards are currently going for. But that's that thing to keep in mind with the 8800GTX -- while it offered a quantum-jump in performance over other cards when it came it out, it also initially sold for a price of somewhere between $600 and $650 dollars, whereas the XFX 9800 GTX is selling for somewhere around $330. At this price, it falls fairly nicely into the current NVIDIA line-up, that starts with the 9600GT (~$150), goes to the 8800 GT (~$200), then the 8800 GTS (512MB) (~$250), and ends with the 9800GX2 ($600). It'll be interesting to see if the price of the still-fast 8800GTX will now plummet, or remain close in price to the 9800GTX, for the time being.

For this review, as always, it comes down to how much you are willing to spend for the amount of performance you are after. As I suspected in my review of the recent XFX 9800GX2, that's the card that'll be king for sometime -- it does not appear that NVIDIA has anything radically different in the works that greatly surpass the 9xxx series of cards any time even remotely soon (in hardware development terms, of course.) Whether the next big thing from ATI, the RV770 (rumored to possibly be coming in May), will be able to offer a new plateau of performance above what is available now is unlikely (but not impossible.) However, while the 9800GTX offers a very good level of performance, it does have a difficulty facing the fantastic deals that can be found on 8800GT and HD3870 cards, for those looking from a bang-for-buck perspective.

Although it consistently out-performed the competition in the charts, it still would have been nice to see the 9800 GTX bring just a little bit more to the table. That may seem hypocritical to say -- but at times the performance gap between the 9800GTX and the 8800 GT and 8800 GTS 512MB seemed just a little too small. However, the 9800GTX does make up this with its excellent overclocking potential, which is substantial indeed. A moderately overclocked 9800GTX can fairly be labeled as the new flagship of fast, in my book.

In the end, the rest of NVIDIA's current line-up is the 9800GTX's own worst enemy, but it can not be denied that the while perhaps not as exciting as the 8800GTX was, the 9800GTX is a worthy successor to that 'old' performance crown, and while perhaps it is not as ground-breaking in its design, the 9800GTX is still a damn fine piece of engineering, with enough positive features to leave a lasting impression.