Given that the only difference between the manufacturers are their factory settings, I'm looking for some kind of comparison chart, kinda like one you'd get from 3dMark or something, that would show me prices (first and foremost) and then benchmark speeds for whatever the most resource taxing game is today. Lastly, I'd need to know how compatible each would be with a 5770 in a CrossFire setup (I don't really fancy paying another $400 for 2x graphics power, considering I can get 1.5x power for an extra $135~, and that's me just assuming a 5770 is only half as powerful as a 5870, which may or may not be the case). Normally I'd go with MSI, since they're usually the first licensed manufacturer to build an OC'd card right off the bat, but the problem there is that they don't ever build any updated boards after that and are usually surpassed by another manufacturer like XFX or Sapphire months later. Speaking of which, the only setting I'd be likely to change on a video card is the fan setting (my 4890 runs at a constant %60 for an idle temp of 42*F, rather than it's default "auto" speed and idle temp of 60*~F), has anyone any experience with the Sapphire Vapor-X card? Is it surpassed by a cheaper card in the same class?

Nobody's screaming, and you're being a smartass. TYPING IN ALL CAPS WOULD BE CONSIDERED SCREAMING, AND EVEN THEN IT WOULD HAVE TO BE IN A LARGER FONT SIZE THAN THIS TO REALLY GET MY POINT ACROSS. It has nothing to do with you "not liking what I like", it's about you citing nothing but fancy bells and whistles that nVidia cards have as opposed to ATI cards, instead of actually laying down some hard comparative facts, like benchmark framerates, power usage and idle temps, etc.
And besides, people like you never just "wander off". You always come back to try and get the last word in.

You answered a question that nobody asked so the OP told you to shut up. If you felt you NEEDED to say something about nVidia cards when everybody else was discussing ATI cards then you are a fanboy. The sad thing is that you don't even realize it.

The 5870 also uses less power for the same gaming performance as the GTX480, and therefore runs cooler and quieter. This is primarily because NVidia dedicated way too much of their hardware towards non-graphics applications of the card. NVidia has a couple of large power hungry cards on the high end of the DirectX 11 market, but ATI has DirectX 11 in their entire product line from top to bottom. They also have a better design process for their chips, because of being affiliated with AMD. The reason NVidia was so late to market in this generation is because they got their chip design wrong and had to do a second run before they could release. (There's a detailed article on this at Anandtech if you care to look.)
Things tend to flip flop between the two companies for different generations. NVidia has been on top for some, ATI on others. IMO, the DirectX 11 generation is going to be dominated by ATI because of better chip design and a wider range of products.
CUDA is not relevant as far as I'm concerned. Like you said Delixe, the only practical use for it right now is folding. And all of the major folding apps support ATI also at this point as well. I know someone who is using an ATI 4770 for folding apps and loves it. Other than that, the head start CUDA has gotten will be irrelevant once a standard is established. As often happens in computing, once a standard happens proprietary solutions get pushed out of relevance.
Now, getting off this tangent and going back to the question that was asked...
As far as brands for ATI cards, Sapphire tends to be the cheapest and uses reference designs. So they are a good bet if you are price sensitive. XFX has the best warranties and the best memory chips for overclocking. So if you can get an XFX for a good price, they may be the best way to go. My last two graphics cards have been PowerColor. They are somewhere in the middle between Sapphire and XFX, but are great cards for the price.

From what i remember fermi was on A4 before release thats 5! nonbase respins if my memories right and after all those it was still hot and hungry. Another thing to note is they aren't making a B0 respin and moving to new chip designs instead (gf104 is in the new cheaper cards releasing in ~2weeks)
@Gundato
When your chip uses too much to be classified as PCI-express so you have to down clock AND remove shaders you have a problem. Bear in mind that to qualify you have to be under 300W thats a crap load of power for a chip that runs -10% to +15% faster than a rival that pushes 180W is half the size (this means that ATI actually makes a profit on the 5xxx series Nvidia is rumored to be losing money on each board sold despit their higher prices)
Oh as for physX it's been shown that if you change the name of an ATI card in it's BIOS to that of an Nvidia card it will run it AS FAST, when you have to rely on artificially limiting things to win you're not in a good position. (oh physx for CPU is badly coded too it could easily run 2-200x faster if they allowed it to multithread and used SSE not X87)
::edit for topic relevance::
I'm hearing good things about zotec aswell my usual choice is powercolor though as it's a good mid-range AIB

XFX makes killer GPUs! Both for nVidia & ATI. They also do a very good job overclocking certain cards, and are priced fairly reasonable. Check them out.

XFX I found made better nVidia gpus then they did ATI. Dunno why. Anyway, I looked up that Sapphire Toxic, and found it perfect for me. I hadn't realized there were any 2GB 5870's out there (Eyefinity6's). Thanks Delixe.
nVidia was okay for me back in the late-90's when game requirements stated "Voodoo 'X' or equivalent" (Or was it "GeForce X or equivalent"?), but later into the 2000's, nVidia cards proved to be really unstable on my custom system builds, especially when I ran alternative OS' like AmigaOS or Knoppix. Team Green had just gotten really bloated by then, and more bells and whistles just means more parts that break and need to be fixed. It's kinda like why I drive Dodge, and never Ford. But that's a totally different argument.