YEah
In other forums, they are having a freaking huge debate over that kind of thing, i.e. cost versus quality, exactly which benchmarks and situations each video card works best on, and really they are gridlocked. I know a couple of things for sure.
1. The Radeon 8500 is an awesome card, gets excellent performance, and is a little buggy unless run in compatibility mode. It is significantly less expensive than the GF4s and even some GF3s, and it still pulls excellent performance.
2. I don't have an infinite supply of money.
3. The GF4 costs significantly more, and I doubt that you get SIGNIFICANT performance improvement.
I am going to hold out for a lot of money to come my way or the Radeons or some other similar cards to go down in price.
Just so you know, on 3DMark 2k1, my friend's system broke 9000.
He has: Radeon 8500, XP 1700+, 256MB crucial 2100DDR, and a 7200 60 GB. Epox mobo, overclocked just a little on everything, but still, it's a very competitive score even against GF3s and 4s, i think you would agree.