The "brilinear" optimization isn't a new thing at all.
It has been used by both AMD & nVIDIA since the Radeon 8xxx series and the RivaTNT series
Only difference between the camps at the moment is that nVIDIA let's you turn it off.
On the other end AMD doesn't allow you to turn it off alone, you can disable Catalyst AI to disable the "brilinear" optimization but that disables other stuff too ( some of them are good, they don't harm the IQ noticeably yet they raise the performance )