I bought a 9800 Pro at BB a couple of weeks ago when they had the $299 deal with rebate. Since it seemed to work fine I sent in the rebate about a week ago. Well, 2 days ago the pro started acting up. After about 2 or 3 minutes of FPS the screen would get snowey & the video would start cutting out. The heathink on the 9800 pro is pretty cheezy. Lightweight and the push pins on mine kept popping out which looked to be the cause of my troubles. Since I sent in the rebate (with the UPC cut from the box) I thought I was stuck RMA'ing it to ATI, but when I checked with BestBuy they took the card back without a hassle for exchange & let me upgrade to the 9800XT which they now had in stock for the price difference ($$$ - OUCH ). I've seen a lot of 9600XT's & 9800XT's on the shelf in the BB & CC stores around here (Northeast US) over the past 2 days.
Great card, but pricey. Much better heatsink solution than the flimsy one they put on the 9800 pro's. My default 3dMark is about 12% higher with the XP compared to the Pro without any tweaking. I didn't really want to spend this much $$$ on a vid card but didn't really like the way the 9800 Pro ran really hot (REAALY HOT ). Also, the 3 week cushion since I bought the 9800 Pro softened the blow since I only had to come up with the difference. If you've got the disposable income it's really a nice card.