New Video Cards in June 2008

Yes. they are slated to be released in week 25 (June 16th to 20th).

ATI's 4870 is supposed to be 50% faster than their 3870 and compete with the 8800GTS 512 and 9800GTX. Prices are said to be in the $300-$350 range. They will also be releasing the 4850 in the $200-$250 range with performance said to be in the range of the 8800GT.

nVidia will be releasing the GTX 280 and GTX 260 in the price range of $600-$450 respectively. The GTX 280 should be more powerful than the current 9800GX2.

Some pics of ATI/AMD 4870/4850:
http://forum.vadim.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=35528

An article on them:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37453/135/

Some pics of nV GTX 280:
http://en.expreview.com/2008/05/20/nvidia-geforce-gtx-2...

An article on it:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/24/...

A recent thread where the two have been discussed:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/251199-15-gtx280-hd...

I can't wait for them to come out  

Sweetness  

Nordic Hardware has info on the 4870x2:

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7796.html

That's the card I want, but it needs a better CPU. A 4870 is expected to be as fast as a 3870x2, so the 4870x2 should be fantastic in games that support Crossfire. I doubt if Nvidia can pull off a dual GPU card next generation.

Thanks for all the information!

So if someone like me is kinda on a budget and doesn't want to spend more than $250 for a video card, which one of the following options would you guys suggest?

OPTION A: Buy a 8800GTS now for $170 - $200 and just keep using that for the next 1-2 years since it will basically do everything that I need.

OPTION B: Wait until the new ones come out so that the price of the older ones drops

OPTION C: Buy an EVGA 8800GTS and use the step-up program IF the new video cards are <$100 more expensive than the 8800GTS ........ only problem with this is that I can't switch to ATI cards I believe and most ppl say those are gonna be better this time around...

All I'm doing is playing Age of Conan, Starcraft 2 (when it releases), watching movies, listening to music and surfing the web........ no video editing or sound mixing or anything.... just LOTSA multitasking

Thanks for your input!

If you can wait, use option B.
It is only a few more weeks.

Yep, there's no information.

So GTS vs HD4850 is a mystery, but that's likely your candidates.

I think optioin B is the best as well. Especially since that's more or less of what I'm doing  
I'm taking it one step further and waiting till the price wars start between the new Ati/AMD cards and new nV cards.

the GTX 280 is supposed to be faster than the 4870 X2....

the 4870 X2 is supposed to compete with the GTX 260... read the new news article that just came out froms toms hardware

That's all about the pricing, the X2 will be priced just north of the GTX260.
It mentions nothing about performance other than to ask the question if the 480 / 960 shaders will perform well enough to capture more market share.