Well Ati cards usually fair better in antiantilizing at high res and dont have a performance drop hardly compared to nvidia.
The drivers.
Nvidia - Usually good and supports all the range of geforce and gets updated often.
Ati - No idea but i presume the ati drivers released always have more problems with each release so ive heard so they update the drivers to fix what the old ones caused in the first place. I think the control panels are about the same tho i think ati have upto 6x aa where as nvidia has upto 8x aa.
Speed wise.
Nvidia 6800 cards are good. I myself have a new asus v9999 GE (6800 that can perform like a gt version). Cards bloody massive tho and requires 2 power connectors one molex from each 12v rail (rail as in 4 pin molex cable.) 8x Antiantilizing isnt perfected and is only best used rarly as i heard a few sites call it experimental. But 4x aa and 16x antistropic filtering, is great. Nvidia usually has lead in image quality too.
Ati - there good performers with AA used as you dont get a performance drop usually. The new GTO version at http://www.overclockers.co.uk are "guarenteed" to unlock to all 16 pipelines. "while stocks last" so if u want a bargain then if u know and want to unlock the extra pipelines to turn it into one of them uber cards then go that route.
Try reviews, forums, websites all about the range ur interested in. http://www.tomshardware.com has a good gfx card comparrison test usually.
So summary:
Nvidia -
1. Good image quality and reliable drivers usually and a new 6800 version card has just been released which might work good for u. Performance is top and is future proof with shader model 3. Has sophisticated cooling solutions and can sometimes take space of pci slot 1 (next to agp slot).
ATi -
Cheaper i think, drivers so so. Cards are physically smaller and dont need much power compared to 6800 series. "i think". Good AA ability. Works fine without massive cooling sollutions generally.
Now if you wanted there is a new motherboard that has both AGP and PCI - E slots. Its the latest AsRock motherboard. About £50 i think but it hardly has any pci slots and is smaller than the normal atx size. You could get one of these and get a cheap agp card and later upgrade to pci-E.
My recomendation would be nvidia. The 6800 cards are well built, will last you ages and have all the latest features of other cards. Drivers usually work for all games and updates often. Performance is great provided you have at least a decent cpu and ram combo. AMD 64 3000 or better or equivelent. With 1 gb ddr ram 400mhz speeds. Best in dual channel setup.
If your in the UK. Try these for good price finding.
kelkoo
pricerunner
dealtime
ebuyer
komplett
overclockers.co.uk
tekheads
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