Qualitywise they are about the same, and have been going back and forth with who has the latest and greatest. ATI video cards tend to require less cooling that nVidia, and are therefore quieter. For awhile nVidia's top of the line cards needed a large, loud heatsink and air duct that took up the PCI slot below the video card. A few months ago when I was looking at video cards they were starting to get away from that. The card you are looking at doesn't have an air duct; they may have phased that out completely by now.
