[Hudzy]

The Asus card is the only one not to occupy that pci space with it's wierd cooling thing apparently. I only have one pci card anyway so it's not that big a deal.

[Descenterace]

I'm a firm supporter of ATI ever since I bought a mach64 card for my old computer and witnessed massive performance increase (this being 1997, and the old card was a 1Mb Trident 9440AGI), without the stability problems of the GeForce card I tested in the system just beforehand.

I know that the GeForce series have got much better, but I also know that my favourite games have compatibility problems with their later drivers.  My Radeon 9700 Pro has had NO COMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS WITH ANY GAME, and I've had it since Christmas.  Except for Bedlam, but that's so ancient even my old card wouldn't run it properly (why the hell does my mouse pointer disappear when it gets more than a quarter of the way down the screen in that game?)

Now all I need is an 8x-compatible motherboard, since it's a pity to have such a high-end video card without the motherboard and processor to take advantage of it.  Are there any plans for 16x AGP yet?

I've heard good things about the FX5900, but I'm not sure how it compares to the Radeon 9800 Pro (which requires slightly less extensive cooling).

[Admiral LSD]

With PCI-X and PCI Express in the works, both of which have higher bandwidth potentials and both the current PCI 2.2, 64 bit PCI and AGP, I doubt there are any plans for 16x AGP.

As for a decent 8x motherboard, it all depends on what sort of CPU your running. Regardless of whether you want/need 8x AGP or not there are only two choices in chipsets: nForce2 if you're running AMD and i865/i875 (alright, that's three choices) if you're running Intel. As for boards, I still stand by my belief that the EPoX 8RDA+ is the best value for money nForce2 board on the market as it's the only board to really pack in everything useful that nF2 has to offer for under USD$100. For i865/i875, I'm struggling to find a better board than Abit's IS7 (i865) and IC7 (i875) board. They're pricey (as Intel stuff usually) but are practically unrivalled so far as I can see.

[Grey Wolf]

I'd actually probably go for a 9800 non-pro right now (not the stinking SE though!). It's cheap, and it overclocks up to 9800 Pro levels.