I have a feeling the NV30 is gonna kick some serious a$$ when its released Free FSAA would be fantastic, which i 'think' the 3dfx Rampage would have had.

Ya, the no performance hit FSAA should be nice, but I'm wondering how many nvidia/ATI GPU generations it'll be before they implement Parhelia's redeeming feature, 16x Fragment Anti-Aliasing. It's clearly superior to FSAA, and doesn't cause much of a performance hit, either.

Probably be the generation after before nvidia can steal that 1 Im actually debating if its worth getting an r300 (because i really liked my Radeon 8500) or just waiting for the nv30.

ATI has really come around with their drivers. I no longer fear getting a great card with crappy drivers. I picked up an 8500LE that's 250/275 stock and all I'll say is that you cannot beat this card for the money. While I haven't seen it first hand, they say the 8500 is getting to be more on par with the GF4 Ti4200! 8) I don't know how true that is, but I'd say that would be a good assesment, as my LE spanks my GF3 I've overclocked past Ti500 speeds---and that's at default. Overclocking this baby really opens the can of whoop-@$$ on that card.