You don't have a choice for "Ambivalent". I'm a hardware whore .... in other words...whomever has the biggest numbers, wins my dollars. Over the years I have installed quite a bit more nVidia cards than ATI as nVidia more often seemed to be top dog when a build was underway. The general feeling I get when building for other people is that the mindset is that nVidia was the "performance" leader and ATI the "performance per dollar" leader....much like MAD and Intel.
That could all change now as ATI's biggest competition is itself. In THG's November "Best Cards for the Money" roundup if I remember right, ATI 4xxx series took 10 categories to NVidia's 4 and ATI's 5xxx's 2 categories. Seems pretty much a given that ATI will close out the XMas season as the top dog with the 5970 and that will certainly win the hearts and minds of all those building between October and at least February even if they aren't buying the top tier card. In the grand scheme of things, nVidia has only two viable cards above the $150 price point (260 and 295) (even though they are making inroads in the entry level area where ATI has customarily ruled the roost) and ATI is left with it's 5xxx series having to compete with its own 4xxx line. With 5xxx yields low and prices rising 15% or more.....their 4xxx series is the 5xxx's biggest competition.
Of course, we have a real differentiator here now in DX11 or PhysX. I am not really a big gamer, but 2 of my 3 kids (18 and 14) are big on PhysX. The oldest (19) isn't excited about either. Looking at the tesselation effects over on the extremetech site, (
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2356196,00.asp ) you can see what tesselation does, tho in many of the pictures, I had to read the text to know where to look. Fans from both sided will of course argue that their thing rocks and the other is meaningless but to my eyes, what I see in batman seems more impressive than what I see in the heaven benchmark. Of course the "mine's bigger" argument will rage on with many on an evangelical crusade to covert the unwashed masses, but in the end we really don't want the war to be won by either side.
Two or more viable GFX card companies means competition and if competition disappears, prices go up ....so long live ATI .... great to see you on top .... long live nVidia ..... get something out there and drive prices down.