Hmmm,...(I am going to get cooked for this)...
I am very disappointed in the NV30. Here is why:
1) It is not DX9 compliant. It lacks displacement mapping, which is a requirement for DX9.
2) The marketing hype about the large shaders is just that. NVidia has stated, "While we have large shader support, we do not recommend using large shaders, as they will make games unplayable".
3) They tout the number of color bits through the pipeline, but state, "If you make use of this, it will slow the board down dramatically".
4) Overall performance is only slightly faster than the 9700Pro today which really tosses the NV30 into a poor price/performance postition against the 9700Pro.
If you look past the marketing hype, the chip is really not that great.
Now Booky...here is what I meant by my statement.
The timeframe you have stated puts you in the position of selecting the NV30 based NVidia card or an ATI R350 based card. The R350 (production in March 03) is a souped up version (0.13u) of the current R300 (the 9700Pro). The price of the 9700Pro will drop like a rock and the R350 based card will come in under the NVidia NV30 cards, but be quite a bit faster than the NVidia cards.
One other thing. I have witnessed that people who are pre-disposed to NVidia are usually never happy with anything ATI produces. I cannot explain this, as it really makes no sense to me.
Every little problem ATI has gets blown way out of proportion, and yet when NVidia screws up, no one says a thing. Really odd, even bizarre.
So when you listed the FX card and then followed up complaining about the Radeon, I figured you just might fit in that category (I could be wrong). I have a Radeon (in one of my older systems) and have never had a problem with it.
Both NVidia and ATI make mistakes. No video card company has ever been perfect and they both have problems today in thier drivers.
Personally, I really dislike the trend of releasing video drivers once a month. For some odd reason, the NVidia consumer really thinks this is a good thing and we are now stuck with that mentality. I really feel for software guys that work under that kind of pressure.
So, overall, if someone appears to be pre-disposed to either ATI or NVidia, I would tell them not to change. In the long run they seem to be happier about it.