X800XL is not a bad card, but you will basically be wasting your money by getting one now. As the above guy said, Nvidia uses Pixel Shader 3.0 while ATI does not. Nobody thought Pixel Shader 3.0 would matter as much so soon, but game manufacturers are jumping right to 3.0 and leaving out coding for 2.0b (which can do the same effects) in order to market Nvidia cards. This way, only people with Nvidia hardware can play games with full eye candy. This is quite sleezy yet smart marketing by Nvidia IMHO.