I can't believe I am saying this, but the 280 is starting to look good

So I just read Anandtech's (God I love Anand) review of the 4850, which I was hoping would be my choice, and it seems their 1000W PSU could not handle crossfire 8450 So I guess my 600w Cooler Master eXtreme will definately not be able to. And overclocking is out too I guess. Unless I upgrade a bunch of my components and live with the added noise from the big PSU plus the noise from two cards.

I did not like the 280GTX because of its reported noise and high price. But it seems slashes are coming soon and then there is this:

http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgrgtx2801024h2ocwe.aspx


Water cooled GTX 280 at highest factory OC!


I have 600 USD to burn and one week to decide. I was thinking crossfire but its requirments and the fact that a single card is just scales a lot better than two are changing my mind.

I have an Asus Rampage MB so its either one card or crossfire, SLI is out.

That power supply they had was a piece of trash then, that simple. Youre going to be paying $800+ for that water cooling block card, not to mention the price of the pump, resovior.......

Is a $1000 video card setup really worth a few more FPS against a card that cost $150-$250?

600 watts is a total rating of the power supply, you need to find out how much of it is on the 12 volt rail(thats the important one now days).

If there are multiply rails you can not always just add them, there should be a total combined 12 volt rating somewhere on the unit.

Exact psu model would help.

save your money and see what the 4870 is like

Unless you have a very, very old video card the 4850 even in crossfire isn't a substantial upgrade from anything modern released in the last 6 months

So in other words, if you are running like a radeon 3850, a GF8600, gf7000 series - it will be worth getting CF 4850 upgrade

if you are running any 8800 Series or 9000 series nvidia card, or any 3870 series ATI - you should just wait for the ATI 4870 if you want a substantial upgrade. The 4870 should be a good jump ahead of the 4850 for a single slot, and then you have the option of Crossfiring it with another 4870 or 4870x2 later

4850 really didn't knock my socks off, its not an inherently bad video card but its not really that much better than anything currently available in its price range like the 8800 GTS 512 or 9800GTX

Soooo as I say, go a little higher on the scale to the 4870 when its out and you'll be happier in the longrun

how aboud this????
http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=11871

Avenger_K is right. That OCZ 1000W PSU that was used for the GTX 280 SLI review didn't get the job done there either.
It also had problems in part of the 4850 CF testing.
More of an issue with that one PSU probably. They might have a marginal model or perhaps abused it during testing for a review.