A nice article rounding up on Nvidia"s lacking behind in the DX9 architecture"s market, the so called drivers "optimizations" and how it may come back.
Since the official release of the GeForce FX 5800, NVIDIA has been under attack by the press and enthusiasts everywhere for their products apparent lack of performance against ATI"s competing Radeon R3x0 series of cards and chips. Since NVIDIA had such an extensive fan and loyalty base, many users have felt betrayed and let down by the company. This is not to say that the users who put down $500+ US to buy the thunderous GeForce FX 5800 Ultra should not be mad about the situation, but there is a lot of background not covered by the press that should be brought to light. There were a series of events that doomed the GeForce FX technology to play second fiddle to ATI"s R300 series in overall performance, and these events happened years ago.
Since the release of the NV-3 processor (Riva 128), NVIDIA has always had a performance part that performed close to the competition in terms of speed, but also included features that the others did not have. The NV-3 was set up against the infamous Virge series, and the legendary Voodoo Graphics. In the face of such competition, the NV-3 was one of the better selling graphics chips of its time. It was not nearly as expensive as the dual chip Voodoo, and performance was leaps and bounds faster than the Virge series. The NV-3 also looked a lot better and was only slightly more expensive than the Virge.