Unreal 3.0 can't play on the X800XT, its a fact. There's a reason they let more people see it on the 6800U than the x800XT.

BIG REASON FOR THE 9800 XT, is cause usually Find them in 256MB DDR, with the Pros its harder to find them with the 256MB DDR.

I Dunno its funny that i see that peeps are having probs with the 56.** driver series from Nvidia, i HAVE BEEN TELLING PEOPLE TO SWITCH BACK TO 53.03, WITH THESE WORDS, IF IT AINT BROKE, DONT FIX IT.

Shouldn't we be aiming for cards that will give 75FPS, or other rate equal to maximum refresh rate of the monitor? We can all see the difference between a 60 and 75 Hz refresh rate - isn't the FPS question essentially the same?

On this basis the difference between 100FPS and 200FPS should be invisible (and the question is academic) as these are additional frames that by definition cannot be seen.

I don't know if this has been said, but...
FILM AND GAMES ARE DIFFERENT.

The reason you do NOT notice the low framerate of a film (23.976 fps, or 29.97 fps, NTSC)
is because the film recorded the motion.
Each frame ina filmstrip has motion on it. Becuase the frame is exposed for a certain amount of time (a SMALL amount of time) it captures the first image, then a small moment later, then a little later.

Basically, you have a motion-blur effect going on on each frame automatically.

With a game, you do not expose chemicals to light to create the image.
You see only each frame.
There is no motion blurring on each frame. This is what makes it easier to notice the framerate drops in games. A action-packed game at 24 fps would look horrible, but an action packed movie at 23.976 looks great.

The reason is that when film is exposed, you get a motion-blur effect on each frame.
You don't get this in games. (Some games try to program such effects in, but it's not a physical blurring do to the motion)

I think that's right. Expanding the idea, the reason film and games look different at the same frame rates is that in a film the speed that the world actually changes at is normal physics speed. By contrast, in a game, the maximum speed that the game-world can change at is the speed that the computer can render the pictures of it.

So in a film, the brain's normal processes just fill in the gaps between the frames making its perception of motion appear smooth. In a game, the game-world actually slows down when the frame rate (the rate that the pictures of it can be shown) drops: the brain can try to fill in the gaps but it appears unreal as the actual events in the game have been slowed down by the hardware - which is the point of over-clocking it ...

acually.. Nvidia's can O/C great.. the ones that can't is not because of the Nvidia VPU, but instead because of the board manufacturer... get Gainward.. they make thier cards to O/C in fact the goldensample cards come O/C stock. One thing I don't like about alot of the ATI cards.. is that the RAM does not have Heatsinks...

The difference in FPS to achieve 'persistence of vision' between movie film and TV or video games has nothing to do with motion blur. In fact you may remember that video cards capable of creating motion blur effects were being manufactured three or four years ago, and this did not automatically double the speed of all of our gaming experiences.

The human brain percieves smooth animation of images at around 25 FPS, and this is the approximate speed that most movie cameras need to work at as one whole frame is being displayed at a time (The portions between the frames are strobed out).

TVs and computer monitors however are interlaced. This means that only every other scanline of information is displayed per frame, so it takes two frames to compose a whole image.

The upshot of this is that to achieve persistence of vision, a minimum framerate of 50fps is required.
Of course the framerate will fluctuate greatly depending on the complexity of the information being displayed by a graphics card at any one time, so for this reason you'd probably want an average of 75fps depending on resolution and variation in complexity within the game to ensure that your fps never dropped below 50, and to guarantee a completely smooth gameplay experience.