Radeon 9800PRO vs 9800XT

I know the XT is a lot better...but its also a lot more MONEY...money that i really dont have right now lol. So would it be wise to get the 9800PRO compared to the XT? The PRO runs at 380MHz while the XT runs at 412MHz, is that REALLY that much of a gaming difference? I dont want to go into any HARDcore gaming but im just wondering what the true difference is between the 2. I was also told that the MHz is the one of the most important things to look at when buying a video card for gaming. Cuz my other option is a 9600XT which does run at 500mHz, that has only 4 pipelines and a much lower bandwidth. So lets even say the 9600XT vs the 9800PRO and 9800XT... what is the true difference between all these. Cuz the 9600XT has a much faster GPU but does lack some other things. Thanks!

 

The most important thing is how much money you spend,you get exactly what you pay for,its like ordering an extra slice of cheese on your burger it cost bit more but tastes about 5 fps better!

 

SM Clock Trans Proc PP Vertex Bandwidth

Radeon 9800 XT 2.0 412MHz 110M 0.15u 8x1 412M 23.36GB
Radeon 9800 Pro 2.0 380MHz 110M 0.15u 8x1 380M 21.76GB


Truthfully is there quite a difference in gaming between the 2...i know there will be some difference...but from one to another theres a very large gap in money, with the PRO being MUCH cheaper. Much cheaper on Ebay anyways. Then theres the Radeon 9600XT...which has a nice clock speed, but struggles in other areas look here:

Radeon 9600 XT 2.0 500MHz 75M 0.13u 4x1 250M 9.6GB

or I could go with the GEforce 6600GT which has a nice clock speed and the rest:

GeForce 6600 GT 3.0 500MHz 146M 0.11u 8x1 375M 16GB


From seeing the Geforce...it almost looks like the best buy to me from all these...i need some input here please

Gamebuzz

 

http://www20.graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/index.html

 

I've been looking to upgrade, myself and have looked at most of those cards. I'll probably end up going with a 6800GT ($320 on zipzoomfly.com), but between the cards you mentioned I'd go with the 6600GT due to the card being more "futureproof" than the radeon's. ATI's cards only use dx9.0b while Nvidia's use 9.0c; better chance of working with more games/longer.