The 9500 and 9600 were excellent cards, koro. Your friend must have had some goofy configuration or something.
A 9800Pro for $85 is an excellent price. They perform well, still plays many of the newest games at good quality, and can overclock very well depending on your cooling setup (+memory heatsinks and good gpu sink).
As for you, Particle, for the nVidia switch, wag of the finger
1900XTX's are surpassing the 7800 line. An ATI card will be in my future upgrade path (After DX10 cards come out), so long as that card will have linux support. As of now, unfortunately, the X*** line doesnt have that great of support, while my 9800 works great.