I can play Oblivion w/ a lot of maxed out textures and only a little clipping in the intro fly-by movie.
Is my card rated as...

Good, bad, or ugly.

Not a bad card, definitely, though definitely not the best. Really you need a PCI-E one to take full advantage of it though - AGP just isn't good enough any more these days for gaming.

Because there are still so many AGP motherboards out there, ATI has ported their latest graphic cards to AGP. I installed one a couple months ago (x1950 with 512mb, running omega drivers) and it screams!  I run it at 1680x1050 (my 22" lcd native mode) and it is flawless with everything just about maxed out. See my full specs in my profile.

-Jumonji

It's not good, but it's not bad. Keep in mind that ATI cards are "media-oriented", whereas NVIDIA's cards are "game-oriented". I personally like using ATI myself (got my HD 2600 XT last week), but I've been told numerous times before that NVIDIA's are better. While that might be the case, ATI's do much more than just play games. Why do you think Microsoft and Nintendo have custom ATI graphics chips inside the Xbox 360 and Wii respectively? And here's something I'm willing to argue with anyone over - ATI's cards are NOT more expensive than NVIDIA's. If anything, it's the other way around.

No, ATI don't make bad cards, not by any stretch of the imagination. They are not, however, nearly as good for running games as Nvidia. So, if you mostly use your PC for games, go with an nvidia card, and if you use it for a lot of other media-type stuff, then ATI may be better.

Their latest cards are generally more expensive than nvidia's latest cards, however. The 8500GT, for example, is about £180, whereas I've seen the ATI equivalent going for around £240.

The HD 3870 X2 is apparently running for ~$500 CDN, while it's yet-to-be-released counterpart (the GeForce 9800 GX2) is speculated to carry a price of ~$450 USD. I'm comparing equivalent cards, and since $CDN and $USD aren't the same equivalency (despite the Canadian Loonie being on par w/ the US Greenback), I take it the GeForce 9800 GX2 would either meet or exceed the HD 3870 X2 in terms of cost.

I'm assuming by CDN, you meant Canada dollars, CAD, as I couldn't find any mention of CDN at all. If so, then, the HD 3870 X2 is:



and the GeForce 9800 GX2 is:



Proof that nvidia cards tend to be cheaper than ATI's, especially when you consider that the 9800 GX2 is more powerful than the HD 3870 X2. I believe the 8800 Ultra is more powerful, and probably even cheaper.

When comparing cards, remember to include overclocking and drivers. The first thing I do with my ATI cards is inst
ll 3rd party omega drivers, which are rock-solid stable and have excellent overclocking support. 

I don't know if the latest generation of NVidia are 2% faster and 3% cheaper out of the box, or whatever. But I definitely love my omega drivers and the card does whatever I want it to with no glitches.

Of course it depends on your motherboard. ATI seems to work better with AMD, and the 1950x with my dual-core AMD 4800 works fantastic. No complaints whatsoever.

-Jumonji

@ Terminator: Yes, I meant to put CAD, not CDN (thanks for correcting me). But I still hold firmly that NVIDIA's cards are not better. Nope. I don't care how many times you prove me wrong with facts, because I've got a noggin made of carbon steel. Nothing you can say or do will ever sway my opinion.

@ Jumonji: Since AMD acquired ATI last year, I've been keeping tabs on the new combined CPU/GPU architecture. It definitely will make things easier to package.

Their LATEST AGP flavor offering 3850 AGP 512 (Powercooler)

Sapphire also has one, but I don't know the link.

Of course, if anyone has one of these they want to lend out, I'd be happy to run some benchmarks comparing it w/ my 3850 PCI-e version. (Asrock Dual Sata user here).

With regard to the 38xx series cards though, all I can say is that for the price I could not be more pleased. I've even take a temporary (well, now close to 3 week) break from modding because of the ingame beauty. Oh man, talking to an addict here.

Truth is,at least last time i saw a true test of both ati and nvidia's best(at the time),that both nvidia or ati,do one thing better than the other, one ran better at higher resolutions...etc.

The one thing that is of note is that nvidia is said to be the go to card on the linux platform,they are said to just work better...though not much available gaming in linux to test those claims....

I can attest to that. If you wanna play games on Linux (Unreal tournament, EVE Online, etc) you do not want an ati card. I have first-hand experience of this; EVE Online refused to run at all, simply because the ati drivers lacked the features needed to do all the 3d effects. since i got an nividia card, i have had no problems at all.