As nickelthing said.......there's another aspect in which this narrow minded approach of software to specific hardware hurts nvidia. nvidia doesnt get its name brand out there by nearly as much...half of getting people to buy your product is to get them familiar with your product, and to get them to like your product. with so many oem companies just throwing hardware together because its cheap, there are many customers who will never know about nvidia, because their phys x isnt running on their machine. when those once uneducated customers decide they want better graphics, they will probably stick with whatever they saw on the pre built computer...but just a better version. if they had nvidia badging telling them that their current graphics were made better by nvidia software.....wouldnt they then assume that maybe nvidias hardware might be an improvement over their current hardware set...
youre not going to win over the accidental customer of ati if that system isnt running nvidia software.