SimHQ Hardware Editor John Reynolds tests the new ATI Radeon HD 4850 in single and CrossFire mode. How does the 4850 compare in performance to the venerable NVIDIA 8800 GTX? Read on.

http://www.simhq.com/_technology2/technology_113a.html

The R600 was a large, hot chip that failed to compete against NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX that had been released a full half-year earlier.

Oh yeah, one of those full half year things?

A good rundown. Thanks, John!

Does anyone know when the 4870's are due at retail?

July, is what I heard. It can't be long now, what with the GTX 280 on the shelves ...

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LOL

I've been pondering in whether to swap out my 8800GTX for a 4850......From the article and other reviews I can conclude that performance within games is nigh on identical?

For gaming at 1680 x 1050 would you say that the extra memory on the 8800GTX will be utilised? If anything I was going down the route of a more recent card would be better purely for the fact that the 8800GTX will soon be worth a lot less and will go down a slippery slope in value. I was thinking that putting my 8800GTX on ebay will pretty much get £120 therefore a direct swap for a HD4850....there is also the CF option down the line.

What do you reckon? Worth the hassle or not for a pretty much identical card? Do you think that mature drivers down the line will also give a good performance boost or it's already running nicely as it is?

Well, IMO the 8800GTX is still a kickass card, so I wouldn't be so quick to throw money away unless you are really unhappy with the performance it has. I don't think the extra memory would help at that resolution. Could be wrong ...

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I'm happy with performance but think that it can't be too long before it rapidly loses its value.

My idea of getting a 4850 is that I can basically do a direct replacement and have a CF option down the line. If I keep hold of the 8800GTX for another 6 months, it will probably be worth about £50.

That is a good point, I tend to assume that parts are valueless as soon as I take them out of the box

As you say, you've just got to look at whether selling the 8800GTX now and buying a 4850 at release is going to cost less than just donating the 8800GTX to a friend or second PC and buying two 4850s after a price drop (or two). If you really can get that much on eBay for it, then I think you probably would come out ahead. But I don't think you'll get a noticable increase in performance from upgrading to a single 4850. And if your mainboard isn't currently crossfire enabled then there is that cost to look forward to as well ...

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