stager - it's very nice having friends in the company. i worked there as a contractor for a number of months waaaaaay back in the day (back before the Slot A Athlon 600MHz came out, for example, and one of the folks there was just BEAMING with happiness that he scored one plus mobo for his son). i guess that makes it like 2000 or so?
anyway, i have found that the nvidia hardware more than meets my needs. i'm not claiming it's better or worse than anything (except the gf3 i replaced with it -- and that wasn't a bad card either), but that it's pretty new. strangely, i have been biased against the radeon line since it first came out. this is probably because an old friend swore to me it was "just better" when at the time it was not.
i think part of ATIs software inadequacy deal is that nvidia really does live in the right place to have access; ati moved out to the silicon valley more recently. it's ironic: i live about 15 minutes north of the 'silicon valley' in a town called Hayward. regardless, nvidia has been buying the right coders for some time, and their drivers purposely limit the performance of their current-gen hardware.
and carmack is a genius; probably before your time this punk kid i know won his ferrari in a doom tournament. thresh was his handle. now he runs a startup that's surviving. but remember, carmack had a great team around him working on their games; it's not ever just one person.
~ dan ~