John Carmack, id Software's lead programmer of Doom fame, has lashed out at nVidia for the release of GeForce4.
Any public comment from such an influencial figure, which contains the phrase "Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom" is worth a closer look. According to Carmack ATI 8500 support for Doom is complete and "GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be
much better performers."
Carmack suggests that nVidia have really messed up the naming of their products and adds;
"Nvidia has really made a mess of the naming conventions here. I always
thought it was bad enough that GF2 was just a speed bumped GF1, while GF3 had
significant architectural improvements over GF2. I expected GF4 to be the
speed bumped GF3, but calling the NV17 GF4-MX really sucks."
You can read Carmacks complete comments and his interesting comparison of nVidia and ATI drivers and hardware here.