So say a much poorer chap such as myself was looking to ATI in the sub $200 range, what should I get. Ive been on the console scene a while now and I am completely out of touch with PC's today.

For $100 cheaper than the GTX285 you can get an HD5850 which is 20-30% faster. For $100 cheaper than the GTX295 you can get the 5870 which is comparable or 5-10% less performing in some Nvidia sponsored games.

The single fastest card is the 5870. The single fastest dual-card setup is two 5870s.

I don't want to get into additional features. AMD has Eyefinity, DX10.1, DX11 and Stream. Nvidia has CUDA and PhysX. None of those are really used much at the moment or significantly add to the experience. Reliability is definitely against Nvidia given the G8x and G9x failures that Nvidia admitted to. Power consumption, noise and temperatures favours the 5xxx series compared to the GTX2xx series.

So why are those better? And more importantly, where is Nvidia's competitor to the 5xxx, or their high-end 40nm parts at all?

And if those two are so good, why have they all but discontinued the GTX275, 285 and 295? Stocks are very low and pricing has crept up due to lack of supply - but unlike the 5xxx that lack isn't due to demand.

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@Adjudicator

Depends. Raw performance, I'd say a 4870 1GB for $155 or 4890 for $170. If you care more about power consumption or DX11 support, the HD5750 at $170 is a better option. Depends on what games you play; a 4850 ($100) would play almost all games on High settings at 1600x1200 or less.

The Nvidia option is the GTX260 at $165. But the 4890 would be better in that case, as it's $5 more but a lot faster than that premium in percentage terms.

Thank you for validating my 4890 purchase :)

wow getting a 5870, your going top shelf best of the market huh.

i got the economy version 5770

you can get basically any graphics card you want for sub $200 dollars, besides the afformentioned 5870. 

Try here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2464.html

And this chart, updated regularly, helps doing fast rough performance comparisons:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2464-8.html  (it also gives a rule of thumb to choose a new GPU powerful enough to notice a significant and worthy performance leap)

You're pretty much always going to be better off with an HD 5xxx series.

• Lower power consumption 1dle/load
• Will be faster once drivers improve and DX11 is utilised.

Whew jus got home from work, thanx guys for the responses

Oh and one more question, do brands matter much like say should I opt for a MSI or ASUS instead of XFX and saphirre

They're mostly all the same, however, Sapphire VaporX ones are supposed to keep quite a bit cooler than most, and also, many are factory overclocked, so another thing to look for.