I allready posted some comments on that here:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=346064#346064
As I said: You can´t really make an apples to apples comparsion here. NV Application has a better IQ than ATI´s Quality setting. So... what can you choose?
Remember in the times of Voodoo3. It offered only 16bit colors. It had a better IQ than NVIDIA´s GF 16bit, but GF2 was able to do 32bit. Something simmilar happened when V5 came out which offered a different FSAA than the NVIDIA cards. The only thing you can do then is to say that this is different. There were people which could live very good with the bad 16bit IQ of the GF compared to V3. Others were not. It´s up to you to choose what you want.
It´s the same like reviewing two cars. They are simply different and you have to write about it.
All new Anisotropic modes from NV and ATI are not real anisotropic filtering. They are some kind of ATI and NVIDIA anisotropic... optimized filtering but not real anisotropic. Both have different approaches. You can´t do real apples to apples comparsions. If NV descides to lower the quality to get better performance - well, that´s their descision - but in the conclusions they must read that ATI offers better IQ. The reader/buyer has to descide if he can live with that.
Well... if you decide to buy a card by only watching benchmark numbers it´s your own fault. If you read the text then you´ll see that I spoke about IQ several times. I compare what ATI calls Quality and what NVIDIA calls Quality - and I show which one offers better IQ.
Lars