ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Absolutely no question, the card was a monster.
While I can't disagree too much with the assessment, the 9800 Pro wasn't much of an upgrade over a 9700 Pro. IIRC, the 9800 Vanilla was about the same speed as a 9700P.
The guys who bought 9500 and unlocked to 9700 + overclock were golden for a long time, lol.
But yeah, the 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800 really were a golden age for ATI, they blew the 4xxx out of the water, and held up perfectly against the FX5800 and even FX5900 (the 256-bit card that should have been the 5800 in the first place, it actually was pretty decent, but too late to the game). It wasn't until the 6xxx series that Nvidia was competitive again, and arguably took the lead with 6600GT being affordable and fast.