Actually I think that 400 failure would benefit the industry in the long run. Nvidia still has a huge advantage in the market share. The more advantage ATI gains right now the better.
And I'm sick of Nvidia's policy of renaming cards (I guess that we can expect a Nvidia GT 605 card - that will be yet another renamed 8800), and pushing the developers to remove features from games that their cards don't support (see Assasin's Creed and DX 10.1).
As I said - no problems for me (and I have been using ATI cards for many years now).
At least ATI drivers don't turn the card cooling system :P. And you can play Gothic one and 2 on an ATI card.
Honestly - by listening to people who have both cards I get the impression that Nvidia and ATI are the same in terms of drivers. They both have their own sets of problems. The legends about ATI terible driver support may have been true in the 8000 (R200) series days. That was nearly a decade ago.
The sad thing is - people will believe it's a new card.
Only Navagon said that he had problems :P.

I have had no problems with my ATI HD3850. I don't personally feel that Nvidia's purported driver superiority is worth the significant cost and inferior feature set (until now) compared to ATI's current offerings.
Nvidia was late with DX10.1 and is late again with DX11, and this is bad for gamers and developers alike. If the 4xx series isn't a significant threat to ATI's offerings while also offering a competitive price point Nvidia is in danger of becoming the Mac of GPUs.

A weaker generation wouldn't really hurt Nvidia (FX seris ;)). They still have a huge advantage in the market share - it won't change in one generation.

Well how long have they been working on this fermi thing? If this thing fails its going to be a while before they get the next chipset out so other then optimizing it they could lose alot of cash.
Also had a fx5200 what a piece of crap that was.

Yes, but how many generations of mediocrity will Nvidia fans stand for before market share starts to suffer? I went with ATI for this current build because it was more powerful than Nvidia offerings in the same price bracket, and since then ATI's cards have become even more powerful and competitive.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/graphics-cards/nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-679629/review?src=rss&attr=all
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/gtx480launch/

Oh hell yeah, they were terrible back then. For the most part they're not remotely that bad. But constant problems add up no matter how small. Plus if a game only properly supports one brand, you know which it's going to be.

Here it is:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/03/27/nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-1-5gb-review/1
Christ it's shite. Long live ATI I guess.

I've read a few reviews now, and must say it's not compelling me to run out and buy one. Sure, there are some good indications that you'll get some performance advantage over the 5870, although nothing earth shattering, but when you factor in the added heat production and higher power draw, I don't think it's worth it.

I've never really understood the fanboyish cult of nVidia and ATI. They're both equally great companies in their own right, they compete endlessly to get higher market share (which seems to switch from ATI to nVidia back to ATI and so on), and they always slash prices every time the other company has a new graphics card so you get damned cheap video cards, but it seems like everywhere you go, there's always some prat that goes "ZOMG ATI PWNS NVIDIA CUZ IT GOT DX11 FIRST" or some shit.
Anyway, I'm really hating myself for getting a 295 last year. I could've waited for one of these but instead I didn't. I suck.

It's not just the increased power draw but the fact it lags behind the 5970 in everyrhing. In real game tests it beats the 5870 but not in playability. Both cards get over 30 FPS at the same detail and resolution. Yet the GTX480 will debut at $499? Are Nvidia trying to throw away everything to ATI?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3783
It doesn't look that bad. It will definitely find an audience. But if ATI decides to lower the prices (and they can afford it), than it won't stand much chance.
The fact that it actually is a new card is a success in itself :).

I stick with Nvidia for one reason. Almost every ATi card I've ever had has caused more problems than any other PC hardware I've ever had. Perhaps it's just bad luck at getting poorly manufactured cards or whatever, but I'm simply no longer prepared to even try them (especially given the -- once again -- insane prices we're expected to pay for hardware here).
So, even if performance is worse compared to ATi, the next time I buy a graphics card to replace my 9600 GT, it's going to be another Nvidia one.

I can only speak for myself and my 4830 but...no problems for a year and a half now. It's quite a piece of work. :)