Tom's Hardware: Topic 4870 or 9800GX2?
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Just read the 4870 review here at toms and im even more impressed with the performance of the 4800 series 
.My next graphics update is going to be in the 300-400$ range and the only cards that really stand out are the 4870(299$,Newegg) and 9800GX2(389$,Newegg). I have a 24 inch 1920x1200 monitor so i know SLI would give me some good fps, but it looks like the 4870 offers about the same performance for 100$ less. What do you guys think?
You must be crazy to buy the GX2.
1. More money
2. More heat
3. More noise
4. More Power to feed
4870 is about 13% slower from 280GTX by the last Toms review and 280GTX by the same review is slightly faster than the GX2 (we are talking average). My guesses are 4870 is going to be about 10% slower and the gaps close even more if not using 2560x1600 4xAA due to the 512 MB compared to 1GB of the GTX.
Also 4870 is single GPU compared to the GX2. It just doesnt make any sense to buy so much trouble for just 10% (which can get even lower after driver updates and new games which could not be optimized for dual gpu)
Also there are games that are still not tuned for dual gpus.
Price wise, Price / performance wise 4870 is WAY much better.
From what I learned with all my experience with computers during the last 15 years, don't underestimate the problems you can have so try to minimize it and buy smart not by heart 
forgot to mention
5. DX10.1 
6. Havoc (which is currently more popular than PhysX) and Diablo 3 will use it
7. I personally think ATI architecture is more future proof than the nVidia's at the moment. ATI support tesselation and other stuff even from now. Now I agree that at the current moment DX10 is not very utilized but things are moving slowly in that direction.
8. Overclockability - From my opinion we havent yet seen all the potential of the 4870 as currently its OC abilities are limited by the Overdrive and no other tools support OC on 4870 yet. But when RivaTuner, Ati Tool etc apps are updated my guesses are that the 4870 will be more overclockable than the GTX280 or GX2 (dont know if the GX2 is overcklockable at all). so you can just pump it up a little and you will have the best performance on the market today. and on 1920x1200 I think you will be able to enjoy all the games for at least 1-2 years ahead
However, if you have some time to wait (my guestimate is 2-4 weeks) we will see 1GB versions of the 4870 which will be priced probably around $350 and I am almost sure this will help them catch up with the 280GTX and GX2.
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