9600GT is it for real?

Here is the original story http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews [...] y_9600_GT/ Do the writers acyually know that this happened? And which mobos are effected? or effective? And, how the selling points for this card, which without a PCI-e of over 100MHZ wont show the oclocked ability, and thus make it a lessor card? We as consumers/enthusiasts dont have time to see which mobo has this ability per review. Did Cleeve et al know of this beforehand?

Yes, it's been previously addressed here on the forums.

What Im wondering is, nVidia didnt tell any of the reviewers of this? or did they?

This is... Interesting. The benchmark results, I suppose, would reflect what the reference system used for its chipset; the nVidia ones would overclock the 9600GT automatically, while the Intel or AMD chipsets used for benchmarking would not.

Still, while it's a novel idea, I'm not yet entirely certain that it would be fully a good idea; this leaves a potential place for errors to arise, and as the article noted, could result, in some cases, of the system not POSTing. And if a piece of hardware, when not defective, won't POST successfully in your machine, it sucks no matter what the benchmarks say.

So here I'm waiting to see if there are any reports of problems with the 9600GT, before I make up my mind on it.

ok, I checked anandtech's article about the HD3870 vs 9600GT. The motherboard they used is the Intel D5400XS (Intel 5400).... Their benchmarks showed very similar results for both GPU's with each of them winning overall fps in certain games (though when the 9600GT won, it was more significant)... Sooo, I guess if you're willing to change the PCIe bus to above 100mhz, the 9600GT should handily out perform the HD3870... On a side note, the 8800GT has dropped prices and the MSI version can be had for around 185 USD on newegg right now... So the obvious choice is the 8800GT since it easily out performs both of the aforementioned GPUs...

My questions:
1. is there any significant features/specs improvements in the newer gpus that would make me consider getting them over the 8800GT??? I don't intend to crossfire, so that's not important... but are the newer GPU features improved significantly enough to justify paying similar prices for lower performance???

2. I've read repeatedly that ati cards provide better video quality where as nvidia cards provide better performance. How much of a difference is the improvement in video quality in ATI cards? Is it worth purchasing the HD3870 over the 8800 GT? I realize it's difficult to quantify something such as video quality, but if you guys say it's a pretty noticeable difference, then I think I'd rather take the performance hit and get the HD3870.