i've been looking at the stats between the two, and they've both got pretty much the same stats, except the 256 one is 100 dollars more. is there any reason i shouldn't just buy the 9800 pro 128 mb? someone please help me, i've been stuck on this for a while. or should i wait until prices drop on the 9800 xt?

Get the 128.

The 256 MB of memory is even going to get used and and possibly not for a long time.

256mb 9800 Pro is maybe 1% faster than the 128mb version. Its not worth buying the 256mb version.

That's because the clock speeds between the two are very little.

Actually, I own the 256 and a friend of mine owns the 128. I've performance tested the both of them in my machine @ 8x w/ fast-write, and the performance increase with the 256 was significant to say the least. 500 3dmarks (in '03) and 1500 in '01. It's all up to you, but the 256 megs could help with future gaming. Right, the clock speeds are different as well, I own the Asus version of the 9800xt, and my friend has the ATi version of the 9800 Pro, so I guess this makes more of a difference. But hey, I love my card and no one can take that away from me.

I used radclocker and and the 9800 PRO 128MB retail I got yesterday, I over clocked it: 378->411.8 Core Clock 337->364.5 Memory Clock *The overclocking makes my card now eactly same as XT since memory and core speed are exactly same as XT's, except XT has 256MB Note: you can overclock safely further but I didnt want to. Stick with the 9800 Pro, My friend got the XT not worth $100 more, even though memory on 256MB Pro is faster it has slightly higher latency than 128 MB version, so basically mem speed is same for: 128 pro (DDR) and 256 Pro (DDR2) *Also you could flash XT bios on any 9800 Pro with no problems according to forums I have been in, so do not spend money for XT! *Having extra memory gives performance boost only in memory intensive areas but minute gain only! *The following are 9800 Series cards' Memory and Core speeds EXACT SPEEDS not the rounded speeds in ATI's website! *9800 256MB DDRII 378 Core 364.5 Memory *9800 128 DDRI 378 Core 351 Memory *9800 XT DDRI 411.8 Core 364.5 Memory