No offense.. but are you kidding? Why pay 100 extra dollars just for an overclocked version of an almost identical card?
I doubt that those 1000 extra points did anything.. thats probably 2-3 frames on Crysis on high. 3DMark is great for measuring your computer's performance in a benchmark. Real-world games is the best way to test your computer's performance. I doubt you will find many people that would ever recommend a 9800gtx over a 8800gts, simply because it's not worth the money at the moment.
Sounds like your another victim of Nvidia's cleverly designed, extra sneaky naming scheme.
*edit* Wait a minute did you say $50? Last time I checked the 9800gtx is around 300, the 8800gt is around 170 and the 8800gts is around 200...