I guess it all depends on what you need at the time you purchase.
My Saphire Radeon 9600 XT is in its fourth year.
I bought it because it was Direct x 9 compat and came with 256 mb ddr video ram. It also did not require a lot of juice to run.
My amd 2400+ was not going to set any speed records so I settled for a middle of the road graphics card.
Now here I am playing games some 4 years later with no problems at all.
I don't know about what developers say when it comes to graphics cards.
What I do know, however, is My ATI card has ran every game I have bought in the last 4 years without a problem.
Of course that might have something to do with a quality power supply and enough fan cooling to turn my rig into a hover craft.
