Well, I don't know if you could consider Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 benchmarks as reliable or not. Doom 3 is clearly optimized for nVidia and Half-Life 2 is clearly optimized for ATI.
I've heard that Far Cry is a fairly neutral game towards either manufacturer. I'd be curious to see the benchmarks if you put, say, the 6600 GT, 6800, x800, and x800 pro together and compared the performance.
I think you are on to something here DJ-Chris. I haven't run Doom III on my 6800 GT rig, but those numbers sound awful high for a 6600GT with 8x AA. Would seem to make sense with 0x AA though.
I remember Gaara once said something about PSM 3.0 being a DX 9.0c instruction, not a DX 9.0 instruction. Therefore, ATI users could play on DX 9.0 levels, but not 9.0c levels. Could be wrong though.
that's correct.
even the ATI 9000 series cards were DX 9.0. DX 9.0C was made just to incorporate PS 3.0
I still say the 6600 GT/6800 plain are about the best bang for the buck ATM. you were right to go for ATI over Nvidia in the 9000 series, but this generation, Nvidia is in the lead.