The monitor problem is fixed to some degree with the last two previous driver updates. The newest drives seem to be giving some monitor problems again for some people.
ATI drivers are still a problem. ATI fixes somethings in a driver update but then breaks something else. If you use NT or Windows 2000 then go with the geforce2. ATI has improved the drives for NT but are still not up to Nvidia speed.
ATI has the most furture packed features on there card for Dx8 but the drivers do not use them very well. The T&L of the Radeon is not even close to the Nvidia. The flakey thing with ATI is drivers - fix and break.
I have a Radeon 32DDR card and all I can say is that I will try someone else's card next time. It is not the worst card I have had but it is not the best when it comes to drivers and fixing problems.
Go over to
Rage3d and check their forum out for problems that people are having. Most can be fixed with tweaking, but I do not think you should have to load different drivers sets and tweak files to get things to work; that is what driver updates are for.