Simply don't get any ATI cards unless you have to. They're overpriced for their performance. They're slow in X compared to others. If you are going to be doing just 2D and want great performance and great 2D quality IMO Millenium G400 is the best choice right now. Strangely, but support for 3D accelleration is there for ATI RagePro based cards and works quite well for my 4M XL card. I am going to upgrade to G400 MAX since prices on those are falling quite rapidly. G400 utah-glx support is nice also, but since it's alpha I'd wait for XF86 4.0 before doing anything serious with 3D.
-- Windows NT: n. 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition.