Well I currently have an Nvidia card and i see that the 9X series have come out but they just shrunk the die for the 8X series and upped the clock a bit and called that good? I mean i like nvidia for the resolutions and games i run they are great but come on.  Another thing that kinda bugs me is that i have the 8800GT and i haven't had a driver update from nvidia for almost 6 months does anyone know why that is?

ATI did the same thing for their 38xx cards. Both companies are just buying time until they can launch new cards in some short time.

Why don't you use the latest beta drivers (currently 175.63, though from what I've read on the guru3d forum people recommend 175.16)? I currently have 175.12, and they work fine.

 
 Your right the only thing i would add is that when ATI did it it made a noticeable difference to the cards, and Nvidia could be said to be flooding the market a bit with all the variations of cards they seem to be  throwing out. The exception being the 9600GT, the rest are all much the same. Could be they have a lot of lower binned chips they need to get off the books before the new cards come out. If this is the case then it could be good news for Nvidia fans when the 4 series from ATI come out. Nvidia could be stuck with stock to shift and that would lead to healthy price drops.
 Could be that they thought the new ATI card wouldn't be all that but have found out that it will be quite good. Now they have a glut of chips they were going to release later but have been forced to bring them forward to shift them and try and bring forward the launch of their own new series.
 All purely speculation on my part but worth thinking about ?
  Mactronix  

ATI made some changes to the design, necessitated by the fact their earlier cards were unimpressive.
 
What we do know is that nvidia has been sitting on its hiney toying with consumers.  Rather than push the boundaries and take advantage of their lead, they have rehashed the same chip in about 10 different ways.
 
If nvidia were smart, they would have released the G200 as the 9800GTX 6 months ago, selling it for $800 and leaving a huge performance gap to the 8800GTS/GT.
 
Instead, they will be forced to cut prices to fight the HD48xx series.  Good news for those of us who would never have bought a G200, but not the best business sense.

showing your hand when you do not need to is bad business sense, milking a design for all it is worth is very good business sense, back to front there i am afraid.

They added HD play, they went DX10.1, they corrected their transustor leakage, yeah just a few changes for getting a slight performance gain, just like nVidia, except no DX10.1 because G80 isnt a true DX10 card and cant do DX10.1 and nVidia wont until theres a new arch from them

I'm quite impressed by the 8600GT(S) to 9600GT generation step.
I also own a 6600GT and 8600GT  is two generations later but only offers marginal performance improvements. 9600GT is quite a leap.

The really "daft" move was not calling the 8800GT(s) the 8900GT(s) from the get go. The 9800GTX should have been 9800GTS. Aside from that it's all marketing. The next blunder is the lack of 9xxx hybrid power sollutions in the new NVIDIA motherboards for Intel processor.

that is not the greatest of comparisons as the 9600GT is not the same as the 66 and 86, both were different series, the 9600 is not a different series just a number change.

 
 Im not sure why the 66 is even relevant but i can see where Andrius is coming from with the comparison between the 8600GTS and the 9600GT. They are both essentially higher level midrange cards for the respective generations and the increase in performance from that view point is very good. Also im not sure where you get only a number change from ? as far as i know a 8600GTS is a G84 core and a 9600GT is a G94 core.  
  Mactronix

die shrink?

Not really. They took a g92 core, and chopped it in half.

So its a G46? heheh

the 8 and 9 series are except in numbers pretty much the same whilst the 6 7 and 8 were all different series of chips.  there just because they have given it a mid range number does not make it a new midrange, only a rebranded mid high end.

perhaps they decided to increase performance in a number line (for once)
 
6600 7600 8600 (gt) fairly close to the same performance, no huge jumps anyhow
 
Or perhaps the performance increase is a natural one.
 
9600gt definitely outperforms all previous n600gt  
 
personally i dont really care i will be enjoying a new card from nvidia before much longer, i rather prefer to wait for prices to hit a low before i upgrade and with all the new cards coming out it wont be long

the 7600 i am sure outperformed the 6600 the 8600 was different only because nvidia chose it to be.
 
  remember, these are only names, a mid range is not defined by number but by performance compared to the high end, numbers are meaningless especially in today's climate.
 
  is it just me or is this thread becoming very silly.

 
 Well the 7600GT runs level with a 8600gt in DX9 mode, it was a very good card.
 I understand that the cards are the same Arch but if this is the way the companies have decided to do business now we need to adjust to it. The fact remains that they made enough of a change to make a significally better card between the 8600GTS and the 9600GT. Quite why the same increase didnt happen at the top end i dont know?
  Mactronix  

i see what he's saying, take the G92, remove some parts, then make it your new midrange. Still though, 128bit->256bit, 256MB->512MB->,32SPs->64SPs, and other things, really made a vast improvement. to think, you would ever have 512MB GDDR3, 256bit, on a sub150$ midrange card.

 
I do, because they took the high end, slightly castrated it, and called it the 9600GT, while for the high end they just added tri-SLi support and gave it a confusing new name.