I'm late to this thread and only read a few pages of it, but here's my take.
I'm not what most would call a powergamer, although one of my favorite aspects of D&D is making choices for my PC when it levels up. I define "more powerful" as granting my PC more interesting and potentially useful skills, powers, spells, etc. I think that there are a wide variety of players who could be considered "power-gamers" but for different reasons, and because there are so many options for leveling a PC, I think the fun for a powergamer is developing an effective PC that contributes mightily to game play.
I think the big draw is the synergy between skills, powers, spells, attack combinations and intended focus (for example, a high Charisma, player who takes "Actor" as a feat and plays a Bard, and dips into rogue to get quicker expertise so he can stack up his persuasion, bluff, etc. may be horrible in combat, but still a powergamer who whats to be the best at social interaction). As long as a player can still choose for that, I think the powergamer would be happy about it. If the choices don't allow for maximizing what they really want to maximize than they would not be happy at all...so, to answer the OP, if all choices were equal, but they spanned different aspects of the game and the player could still choose which aspect he/she wanted to excel at, I think it would be ok for the powergamer.