ATI cannot make working video drivers

[audiofreak]

Many people play games with V-sync disabled

If you mean "many out of those who play first person shooters with old engines which can push 300+ FPS on modern hardware", then I agree.

For all other kinds of games steady FPS is preferred and V-SYNC is necessary for TFT/LCD gaming.

...unless you never turn your PC on except when you want to play a game, if so you're by FAR in the minority.

What I said is that people who play games spend more time doing that than they spend emailing or surfing. You clearly fall into the other category and therefore you cannot judge the driver quality for games.

the difference in text sharpness is immediately apparent.

From the links you have provided it seems that I was spot on when I said "scaling" -- there is nothing to fix, it is not a broken driver but broken monitor EDID which forces driver to use incorrect settings.

It is obvious that ATI driver does some sort of override, and gets you the correct picture, but if I had a broken monitor which doesn't report proper EDID I would personally prefer to know so that I never buy the same brand again.

Here are step by step instructions how to fix it:
http://files.bortweb.com/how_to_fix_...en_or_text.htm

It's pretty obvious by your post that you don't have a long history with ATI or Nvidia, these are known isssues with Nvidia that have been there for years and stated by many people.

Yeah, I owned NVIDIA cards only since GeForce 256, and ATI only since Radeon 9600 Pro, that makes me a total n00b