Do you know some of your stuff?
Yes.
First of all, ATi has been "worse" since the release of the 8-series cards.
Exactly.
Has been.
Is not.
This is because the 2900XT ran hot and was not on par with the 8800GTX. ATi has still not made a recovery from that and AMD's stocks show it.
Actually 2900XT was a really good card, as I learned some time ago (yes, I though it was bad, or "old", but was quicky corrected for loling at someone suggesting the 2900XT as a solid card. It is.)
In my opinion, ATi is still underrated.. Most ppl look at the GTX 280, GTX 260, 9800GTX/+, and 9800GX2 before considering a 48-series.
Most? Do
you know some of your stuff? The 4-series cards totally caught NVIDIA by surprise and coupled with other difficulties NVIDIA were having such as having to recall thousands of integrated GPUs and getting sued by their own shareholders, NVIDIA lost quite significant amounts of market share and their stocks are doing anything but well. IMO saying that ATi is overrated is an overkill, if not just plain wrong.
If you ask me, ATi has some marketing skills to work on, I don't think AMD has ever had marketing skills and their acquisition of ATi a couple years back didn't help ATi's marketing.
Actually, most of their success can be attributed to their marketing skills. Until Athlon, AMD hardware had been inferior to Intel's offerings and AMD's clever marketing strategies and tactical partnerships is what kept them afloat and in the end made them pretty popular. If you wonder how I know this, I did a Business Management (VCE Units 1&2 - just to add the "fancy factor") assignment on AMD/Jerry Sanders, and because the subect is what it is I had to focus on their marketing/business operation a lot...