The BigYin
Actually sold by nVidia? I'd love a picture of the box the card came in. I've never seen an nVidia video card. I've seen cards using nVidia chips that are sold by ASUS, MSI, EVGA, BFG, XFX and Zotac. The box clearly states in big letters which company is selling the card, but it's never nVidia-branded.
(It might be an nVidia GT280 class chip, but it's made, manufactured and sold by one of the partners.)
The drivers are nVidia, (as they are the original chip designers,) but this is no different than many similar companies. (When was the last time you bought a Realtek sound card? Realtek makes the drivers, but the chips are incorporated onto motherboards, as opposed to discreet units that are sold by Realtek.)
As to your buying/not buying video cards from a specific manufacturer, everyone has their preferences. The comment wasn't about fanboyism, it was about pointing out similar business models.
If you want a bit of a fanboy-off however…I personally will never buy nVidia due to Jen Hsun Huang being a gigantic douchebag. The ridiculous number of nVidia cards I've had implode on me in the 8600/8800 series, (and thier related "we rebranded the card as a different number in a higher series) chips has cost me a lot of time and money. Oh yeah, and the whole fact that nVidia rebrands their cards instead of designing news ones. (When I buy a 9600, I want a distinct item, not a rebadged 8800, etc.) Slightly less important, but still a factor is that every time I have encountered nVidia reps at a convention etc. they have been unfriendly and fairly difficult to deal with. The ATI guys have always been charming, polite and helpful. Mind you, that could be that ATI is Canadian, so I just “speak the language.”
Also on my list is Sony. I still haven’t forgiven them for the whole rootkit fiasco, nor am I a fan of their constant attempts to create a proprietary format that they dominate and can charge us through the nose for. (Like they did with minidisc.) Their quality is shoddy and Acer-like. Their products are inferior and Acer-like. Their prices are about Acer*2. (And they don’t interoperate with anything!)
Of course all of the above statements can not and do not apply to all products made by these companies, but reflect my personal experiences with these companies and the products they make. Do something good, and a person tells two of his friends. Do something terrible and they tell the whole block…