   DX 10 class GPU ? ATI  or NVIDIA
  My choice is : GTS 8800 320MB or ATI 2900 512MB (that's the highest strech of my courent budget)I've spent last two days trying to dig up some info on their DX10 caps, yet no realistic test courently exists. No "true" DX 10 benchmarks exist, and DX10 games seem to be cheap/sponsored conversions from DX 9 done half wright, and only working well on sponsors hardware. The closest to a "realistic" DX 10 was the bioshock, buth the 20 FPs look's on high-mid end looks bad, like "beta" or untested functionality. It's bound to change with new patches.I basicaly want a GPU witch will alow me not to wory about tech compatibility with latest industry trends for another 2 years. Performance with DX10 is the key point in decision since i intend to experiment with new features like geometry shading, multi stream sources, render to buffers ... DX9 performance is less important, but ocasionaly i play games so it's affecting the decision too.I would definetly like to hear from programmers who already own the cards and play with DX10, would love to hear your opinions based on actual work with the cards.   
  My GTS8800 is lovely to play with, I've been writing some General Purpose Algorithms using the shader languages and its seem to be doing everything I've thrown at it.  I'm a little concerned however that the drivers are not quite up to scratch as they could be, time should fix that though.Another point is that when its performing graphics tasks, the fan spins faster and is very loud, but your not going to get the latest tech without that atm!I think the thing will last for a good few years yet, I think the adoption of DX10 h/w is going to be fairly loosely related to the widescale adoption of vista.I wouldn't trade my card in, but I think I should of waited for the second generation of these cards to come out before buying, they'll probably be cheaper and more stable;  its often quite sensible in the IT world to leave the early adoption of new h/w to people who have too much bloody money ;-)   ;  I think the ATI cards look more desirable on the low end, while NVIDIA seems better on the high end. At your price point, I'd go with the NVIDIA. Of course, with these cards, a new driver version may totally change the performance land -- both are capable cards. (Oh, and NVIDIA is traditionally a lot easier to develop for, if you use OpenGL)