I've read lots of posts where people have said "Be sure to get the 256 mb".
There is confusion here...
I'll explain it to you, There is different things to check when you get a Radeon 9800 based card.
First, the amount of memory you need/want. 128Megs is enough with this generation of video card. So buying 256Megs version is not worth the extra money, you will not gain any performance (or you will gain just a bit that you will only notice on benhmarks results and not in games).
Second, the memory bus width, there is 2 possibilities : 128bit or 256bit. <font color=red>NEVER buy</font color=red> a Radeon 9800 PRO based board with a 128bit bus width, thuis half-sized bus really hurt the performance of the Radeon 9800 GPU.
Many people were concerned because Sapphire try to sold Radeon 9800 PRO with a 128bit bus but the official Radeon 9800 PRO <b>MUST</b> have a 256bit bus.
<b>Se be sure the card you want to buy have these specs :
Radeon 9800 PRO GPU @ 380MHz
128Megs of RAM @ 680MHz (or DDR340)
256bit memory bus (<font color=red>not 128bit</font color=red>)</b>
Some card will be clocked around 380 and 680, not necessarly the exact same speed. But you don't need to care about that if the speed are - 2 or 3 MHz. More than that, you potential card might have cheap RAM or heatsink. But usually, you will never find a Radeon 9800 PRO at slower speed than the ATI specs.
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It's tricky to use words like <b><font color=green>AMD</font color=green></b> or <b><font color=blue>Intel</font color=blue></b> in a signature some users could think your are biased.