Does it really matter to which country a corporation and 51% of its owners pay taxes? As most tech companies, both employ the best talent available meaning many "foreigners", especially for crictical engineering &c. while most manufacturing and assembly &c. is obviously done overseas. That said, nVidia's customers are other companies (so cannot really even enter into a fair "consumer friendly" contest) and their cards seem to vary more in quality certainly than from ATI's retail, if not its partners as well. I don't know if ATI has stricter requirements or what but nVidia seems to allow for more flexibility in quality (especially in the recent past with el cheapo DAC filters).