Radeon HD 4850 X2 Priced at $399, Claims to Outperform GTX 280
The battle for supremacy in the current generation of consumer graphics hasn't calmed down as yet. Just as reports came in of NVIDIA giving the GeForce GTX 260 a boost with its shader compute power by enabling 24 shader units, taking on the Radeon HD 4870, GeForce GTX 280 seems to be enjoying its $420~$440 price-tag. For sure it isn't the fastest graphics accelerator but its compelling price tag is what is drawing buyers away from the HD 4870 X2.
AMD had already announced in its press release for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 launch that it would release a HD 4850 X2 at a roughly $400 price range. That moment seems to be coming closer, when ATI has a graphics card for $399, that outperforms the GeForce GTX 280. Three slides from the company have surfaced. The first one lists out its vital specifications, including its maximum power draw, rated at 230W. The memory bandwidth of this card is 128 GB/s, and it ends up with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.
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The second slide shows some company performance figures, which claim that the HD 4850 X2 could be up to 40% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in some games, with an overall lead across all tests mentioned. The third slide shows how ATI is stacked up against NVIDIA in Q3, however, the entry of the revised GTX 260 could disturb that chart.
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