Atomicwar: A very LARGE amount of your argument is completely false sorry to say. Who in the world says ATI makes these mobo's? The chipset is what they sell, the PCB is created to the specification desired by the Motherboard manufacturers depending on the model they are making. Unfortunately, you need to get a few of your facts in line before you try to make some jabs at a company. ATI doesn't make the boards, they make the chipset, the mobo manufactuers (asus, gigabyte, XFX, msi, etc) make the boards and how they are organized.
In terms of your tri sli and 3 card argument. Dual slot cards are big, there is also a specification they must design too. Of course you would lose all your slots if you go with tri/quad awith dual slot cooled cards, what do you think? They can increase the number of slots and extend the board so it doesn't fit in any cases? They have a specification they have to design to. The upside of the single slot configuration from AMD, is they allow just that, room to spare for a extra sound card if you wish. Nvidia also has single slot coolers in the 8800 GT form, for tri sli and room for a sound or tv tuner card if you wished. A lot of your arguments have no basis unfortunately, I don't mean this as a bash, but you should read up and think about it logically before you point the finger.
Regarding the AM2+ nvidia chipsets, they are coming, that's what 780A is. When? not sure, we'll have to wait and see. The one thing I do hate though, is the fact that Nvidia is forcing users to use their chipset for SLI/Tri-Sli, why? Because their damn nvidia intel chipsets are horrid imo. the 650/680 are know to be heaty buggers with many other issues. I wouldn't mind it if their chipset was a good performer, but with the issues it has, it makes me stay away from a dual nvidia card setup.
IMO, Nvidia are greedy in this segment of the market, I hope you realize the 780I/A and 750I/A are not new, they are just 650/680 chipsets with a few new features, one is support for PCI-E 2.0, which is idiotic for the 750 chipset when they are limited to 8x in a dual card solution to begin with. In regards to 780I/A, it's just 680, with pci-e 2.0, and a BR-04 bridge chip to allow Tri-Sli. This is a serious slap in the face, I don't understand how nvidia chipset adopters aren't offended. Labeling a old product a new chipset when they just updated it to PCI-E 2.0 and allowing tri-sli is insulting. It has all the same faults that 650/680 had.
The fact is this, if you want a dual card cooling solution with tri or quad graphics, good luck getting a soundcard, that is fact and you'll have to live with it. If it's a absolute necessity, you have single slot cards for a reason, the 8800GT and 3850/3870 deliver with no problems in that regard.
In regards to holding off your judgement, no need, if you have an opinion about 680I/A, carry it over to 780, it's exactly the same, and you should be insulted that this is called a "new" chipset.