Hal - I disagree with that IQ thing. Nvidia vs. ATi in DVD playback is no contest, Nvidia 6--- series wins every time. The FX's were very bad of course, but I've used both the next gen Nvidia and ATi cards and there is very little difference, as Kram said - it's subjective.
ATi's pricing is off the mark, even if the cards are new. They promised that the prices would be at a certain mark, and failed. We'll see if they can bring the prices down in the near future.
Here's a thread I made on the pricing and architectures of new cards:
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=120932
fedz