Bunny:
"Oops, guess it takes nVidia 6 months to merely catch up and then an additional 3 or so to take the lead while ATI's invested little in their flag ships considering how similar the R350 is to the R300, they've had all that time and to assume they've done nothing with it but make the R300 a little faster and possible a little more effecicent, lofl."
Big deal. Let's see: ATI has had arguably the "best" card for 6 months out of the last 5 years. Woohoo. They are the past and future KING! No one can ever stand up to their genius!
CHshica:
"Simply put the FX line provides less than expected performance by far, and contrary to what you say here, the only benchmarks it actually does outperform the R9700/R9800 pro cards in is when AA/AF are disabled at resolutions above 1024"
You are overlooking the obvious and putting your own (meaningless) conditions on the equation:
1. A card doesn't have to be significantly faster because it came out 6 months later. All that matters is that it offer roughly comparable performance at the time you buy, which the FX does.
2. FPS players often don't care much about FSAA
3. ATI cards have more driver and hardware compatibility issues, period.
Lonyo:
"In Unreal Tournament, AF makes it soo much better, I get such bad texture blending, I'd rather have AF/AA speed than raw res speed. Now, if only I could afford a 9500PRO. "
Really? Your system isn't HALF powerful enough to play UT2003 at 1280 with AA/FF. I have a P4 2.53/512 PC2700/R9700Pro, and I play UT2003 at 10X7X32, 4X Aniso.
Why? Because I like to win, and it screws me up when UT2003 jerks and stutters using quality AF/AA settings.