good advice! edit: save for the 9800 GTX which is quite an overkill, you can find most of the hardware in several 15 inch screen laptops!!

since i always go for current generation mid-range or older high-end cards, i usually look for reviews with performance stats comparisons before saying good bye to my money. pipe lines, shaders, memory, they really don't make a lot of sense to me until a decent performance is proven through some kind of test