The best card out there at this moment is the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. However, ATI has a long and messy history of delivering crap drivers so you couldn't use their cards. Nvidia has much much better driver support. ATI claim they won't do that again but I'm waiting to see if the drivers for the 9700 actually get better support than in the past. Nvidia's NV30 WILL be better than the 9700, but it isn't here yet and will not be for quite a few months.
If you're choosing between a radeon 8500, 9000 or lower and a geforce 4 ti card, get the geforce 4. It all depends on how much money you've got
