Quote:

Not quite. 9800 Non-pro's, depending on the company, use lower quality memory which will not overclock that well.



Yes you're right. Some third party manufacturers don't use Samsung memory on their boards. A lot of them do. Most of the built by ATI boards DO use the Samsung memory. Well, what do we do then? Do some RESEARCH, find the boards with the good memory, overclock it, save some money.

Quote:

You seem to casually mention that overclockingor flasing bios will solve the problem.



What problem? It doesn't solve a problem. It saves you money. If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, do some reading, and flash your BIOS. It's actually a really easy process. Back in the day flashing hardware used to be a big danger and people used to hate doing/didn't do it at all. Today you have programs that literally say "Ok, where's the BIOS image... Ok, click FLASH. OK DONE" It's a sinch. It saves you money.

Quote:

Not everyone I overclocks and flashes bios, I wouldn't want some of the 'computer' people I know overclocking, they would damage their equipment.



That's because those "computer people" don't know what they're doing.

Quote:

Plus you can overclock the pro version, which almost guerentee's you will have higher end memory that will run a faster overclock. Spend the extra money.



Right. You can essentially overclock a NP->PRO or a PRO->XT. It's your choice, and budget, really.

Quote:

Also, I don't see how you can get crappy framerates with your system, unless you are trying to run something like 1600x1200 8xAA.



No. I don't use AA or AF. I think those options are lame and are destroying driver performance. ATI and NVidia are focusing so much on AA and AF these days they neglect NON-AA and NON-AF application performance. It pisses me off, and I don't support those options. I run the game at 1024x768 at High Quality with all special effects on for Single Player... It drops to 30FPS sometimes, and that's unacceptable to me.