4850 tested in vantage and 3dmark06

.... weird... the 4870 X2 is supposed to score around X5500... which would put the 4870 X2 as being twice as good as the 4850 instead of the 4870... that would imply scaling is poor.... or that drivers still are highly immature... don't know if the 8 k in 3dmark06 though is good or not... cant really find 3dmark06 2560 1600 scores

If I recall correctly, the 3870x2 only gets 50% more performance than a 3870, so the 4870x2 doubling the 4850 sounds reasonable, as it should only be 50% faster than a 4870. Neither Crossfire nor SLI really doubles the performance over a single GPU.

At any rate, summer and fall will be a great time to upgrade. In my case, I should upgrade my CPU, motherboard and monitor before getting a new GPU. When I do get a new GPU, a 4870x2 looks good.

Hopefully, we'll see some native DX10.1 games out that can't be neutered by a patch because Nvidia threatens to pull a TWIMTBP marketing logo. If there were a level playing field, with both companies having equal access to pre-release code for driver optimization at the starting gate, I'd expect ATI to beat Nvidia hands down. As is, I expect GTX280 to do a bit better in fps while ATI catches up after a few driver releases. By then, the early benchies will be out and damage will be done.

Still, at their price point, I expect the 4850 and 4870 to do very well and be very competitive against the 9600 and 8800 class cards, and somewhat competitive against the GTX260.

im pretty sure the 3870x2 beats 2-3870's in xfire

I can handle performance just below a 9800GTX for less than two smackeroos.

3dmark scores mean nothing

I don't get it:S