Bamboo

Fuddzilla just keeps the news rolling in..................

Geforce 9800GTX drops to $199 – $209

Geforce GTX 260 comes on Wednesday

Radeon 4870 to sell for €229

Radeon HD 4870 to be in short supply

Radeon 4870 benchmarked Not a very good review, just some guy playing with one in China

Asus jumps the gun, announces HD 4870

Sapphire and PowerColor announce HD 4870

Geforce 9800 GTX+ to sell for $229 I am kind of excited about this card as well. Remember how much of a boost the 8800GTS got when they did a die shrink on it and it went from the 640mb version to the 512mb version. I am hoping this card is going to be really good, and at that price, might be a tough call between it and the 4870. Will only be able to decide once a few driver releases come out and they get things running right.

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Long Bow

Wow, it looks like the 4850 is the new 8800GT At the price their selling and the potential to run that in Crossfire for not much coin, things are looking up for ATI.

Of course nVidia will sabatoge this but still ATI finally seems to have a competitive product again. It also appears that their anti alaising problems are fixed

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Bamboo

Well, today is the big day where we finally find out about the ATI 4870. Of course there is still the X2 model due out in July or August, but for now this is their top dog...........

Wednesday is Radeon 4870 day

First HD 4870 listings appear in the E.U

R8x0 next gen ATI is again a dual chip

R700 is faster than GTX 280

Radeon HD 4870 beats every 9800 GTX

ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 reviewed: all that and a bag of RV770 chips --That link lists a lot of review sites, such as this next one from Andantech.com

The Radeon HD 4870 & 4850: AMD Wins at $199 and $299





Now here is what has me excited

"AMD's architecture did very well under Call of Duty 4 in the single-card tests, with a single Radeon HD 4870 performing better than a GeForce GTX 260. The scaling from one to two cards is beyond perfect in CoD4, the reason being that we test on two different platforms (Intel X48 for CrossFire, NVIDIA 790i for all single-cards), the end result is a rare case where two of AMD's $300 cards actually outperform two of NVIDIA's $650 cards. By no means is it the norm, but it is a testament to the strength of AMD's RV770 GPU."

Crossfire and SLI scores



So looking at that, cross your fingers the Dual chip X2 I mentioned at the top runs similar to that 4870 in crossfire score, which it should. And the X2 runs around $399 now, and I hope they keep that price point.

To be fair, it didn't do as amazing in every other game, but then again the drivers out now are pretty much beta drivers, so it can only get better.

"For now, the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 are both solid values and cards we would absolutely recommend to readers looking for hardware at the $200 and $300 price points. The fact of the matter is that by NVIDIA's standards, the 4870 should be priced at $400 and the 4850 should be around $250. You can either look at it as AMD giving you a bargain or NVIDIA charging too much, either way it's healthy competition in the graphics industry once again (after far too long of a hiatus). "

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Bamboo

Looks like there are some good deals out for the 4850 if you know where to look.

Here are 2 deals to get it for $150

http://www.slickdeals.net/permadeal/...55-after-20MIR

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Long Bow

Well it looks like ATI has pulled it off (knocks on wood). Those reviews are really promising. The thing that gets me is the GTX260, what exactly is the deal with this card? It is $100 more (and I believe was going to start $130 more initially) and in most cases isn't any faster but slightly slower then the 4870.

Crossfire doesn't seem to be as widely supported as SLI but at the price your paying to run Crossfire vs. SLI you can afford to wait on drivers. I think the tough choice now would be do you grab two cheap 4850's or a 4870? Or a 4870 now and then one in a year?

PS. can I borrow $300 from someone?

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Bamboo

Or, how about a 4850 now and a 4870 later when you start playing the games that will be out later this year, and decide you want that extra horsepower.

I think that is one part of Crossfire that beats SLI. I am pretty sure you can mix and match a little more.

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Reaperassault

you can even do 4800 with a 3800 , how is that for mix and match.

its quite technical in most points but I love this article from Techreport.com. you can go straight to the game bench marks to see the goodness of crossfire 4870s which are cheaper than a single GTX280

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Red

Finally there is a card I feel that its worth getting. I skipped all the nvidia re-hashes (Actually tried both a 8800GTX and the 8800GT for a month each then returned them) the performance gain was not worth it and then the 38XX series was a disapointment to me as it did not give me enough over my old 1900XTX. But the 4870 is a hell of a chip
2X the performance of 3870 thats just crazy. I ordered one from newegg yesterday with 1 day shipping, its time to fire up Crysis, Ghost Recon 2, Armed Assault, Call of Duty 4, Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion with texture pack and Medival Total War 2 again and it might be time to buy Witcher, Stalker and Call of Juarez then last but not least crank up the AA in PR.

And when the 4870X2 comes out I might get one of those or just get another 4870 in CF.

I have been waiting to upgrade for a whole year reading countless of posts on the internet about graphics card both current and planned, now I can rest for a year.

KillDaddy

when i finally get ready to build I think I'm gonna look at a nice CrossFire board and either 2 4870s or 1 4870X2 (depending on which is a cheaper solution)

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Long Bow

I have seen the 4850's already on sale for $189 here. If they drop a bit more over the summer Crossfire could be a reality for me, assuming my PSU can deal with it. It's amazing how this generation of cards is really changing things up.

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Bamboo

For those that are interested in the X2 ATI cards out in a month:

Radeon 4850 X2 2GB to sell for $449

R700 to launch on 12th of August


Also, word is Nvidia dropped the price of the 280 again.

Crap, posted above stuff too soon before I checked my RSS feeds. Lots more news out on it

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15105

http://www.techpowerup.com/index.php?65738

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/745/1/

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3354


Bottom line is it is an amazing card, but does a lot better in some games than others, due to crossfire drivers. Crysis for instance isn't very good, but Conan and Grid are amazing, well above a 280 SLI setup.



Also, more on the Nvidia side of things

GeForce GTX 200 ''Worst Product Launch in the History of NVIDIA'' - Vendors

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce 280 GTX Price Cuts Now Official

So you can find the 260 as low as $299, the same price as the 4870. And overclocked 260s are about $225.

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Holy

I really want one of the new next gen cards. I'll be saving up for quite a long time though.

Bamboo

Couple more for today:

EVGA announces its 55nm 9800GTX+

I really want to see some tests on this card compared to a 260.

and

EVGA Geforce GTX 280 drops to $449.99

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Bamboo

Just posted:

GT200 55nm comes by September

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...=8515&Itemid=1

So just one more reason to hold of an see what Nvidia can put out in reply to ATI. Man, the 4850 is still so tempting at these low prices though.

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Long Bow

I know I'm not in a position to buy right now but if I was I wouldn't wait. I think that the biggest issue I would have is do I go with a 4870 or grab a 4850 now and another in about a year? Seriously I wouldn't even consider the nVidia offerings based on the fact that they tried to gouge people and they are now scrambling to save face. The current ATi stuff is more then enough power for most and not as expensive. Sure nVidia may bring out something more powerfull in the fall but at that point the ATi cards will be even cheaper, win.

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