FoxyLoxy has hit it dead on, I would much rather have two very competetive cards rather than one clear "winner". It forces more competetive pricing and motivates both companies to work a little harder to put out a better card.
I have never experienced any driver problems with any ATi card I've used or installed, and the same can be said for nVidia. I have never experienced any of this "wall shadowing" that I've noticed people commenting on lately here, and I have never been disappointed in the performance of either company's cadillac cards.
Some of the ATi bashing demonstrated on this forum is just barbaric, now it is true that ATi has its flaws and nVidia is stronger in certain areas, but the same can be said for both companies.
Having said that, it's perfectly fine to have an opinion based on previous experience with a card, but you cannot simply rule out that every other card ever manufactured by said company is complete and utter crap.
I'm just sick of seeing these forums plagued with these useless topics, they solve nothing, no one cares if you think nVidia or ATi suck. Unless this problem is keeping you from sleeping, I really and truly wish we could just drop this, hold hands and sing.
That much video memory is pretty useless right now, I am much more looking forward to the ATi r520 core with 24 pipelines and its nVidia competitor.