I'm an ATI convert, but I think the NV40 is going to be an extremely solid card. The reason being the latest NVIDIA cards over the last year or so have basically had their lunch eaten for them by ATI after owning the market for quite awhile. NVIDIA "needs" a top of the line, pack leading card again to save face.

FYI, don't count on those ATI specs you listed as being the final card specs.