ATI has had decent to great offerings for hardware for some time now. Their x1900 series card seem to be a step above nvidias 7900 series. Their drivers have improved a lot, although I still don't care for the CCC.
However, as a total offering ATI falls short of nvidia is a few areas. They're only now getting less terrible coolers, whoever decided to keep that dustbuster cooler over 3 product generations should be fired. Not all of nvidia's coolers have been great either, but at least they didn't keep a terrible design for such a long time. And their partners aren't as good as nvidias. XFX, eVGA, BFG all offer good warrentee programs and customer service...without a signifigant premium. Its easy to overlook these things, but they do matter. They especially matter since when you're trying to get marketshare from nvidia...these users are used to these things.
ATI has had better IQ for awhile, I remember being surprised how much cleaner things looked moving from a 6800 to an x850xt. But nvidia has finally caught up it seems with the 8800 series.