Some people just can't let things go, can they?

Good deal. Small correction, you say while recommending 4870 512MB CF "The Radeon HD 4870 512 MB card cinched the $165 recommendation..." However you never recommended the 4870 512MB, opting to recommend the slightly more expensive 1GB version instead. (Which we all agree is the better single card deal.)
I've seen some bad comments on the 4850X2 recently on other sites, complaints about performance from various reviewers. I know nothing for sure, but it makes me a bit nervous about the card.

Thanks Prox. I just re-worded this a little bit for Don. He made a couple of last-minute changes to reflect price adjustments that happened in the last day. Thus, the 512MB card dropped off the list as a single-card solution.

Why does the GTX 260 core 216 have 192 shader units? And why 65nm? 55nm version has been released.

Ah ha, but you didn't catch the 64 texture units! =)

Kidding, that table has been fixed as well.

Just got myself a new XFX GTS 250, along with a Corsair VX550W PSU.

Upgrading from a 8500GT, the leap is huge. It can run every single game except Crysis on max details! It was really worth the price, and it competes well against the 4850.

Too bad in Canada I had to pay nearly $200 after tax.

what happened to the supposed price drop for the ati 4870? when is that going to happen?

Good article guys, as for the price drop superhighperf, THG did a news flash on it recently and looks like it might not happen: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/A [...] ,7252.html , or it might just be in the form of mail-in-rebates. I am curious about this possible new RV740, it might not increase performance over lower end R770's, but will it be much more power efficient I wonder? Maybe R740 CF will cost less at the wall then a single big GPU like the GTX285?

I don't get it. You recommend the HD4870 1Gb for a single card (which I understand and agree with) but you recommend 2x HD4870 512Mb for Crossfire.

I was under the impression that in a crossfire configuration a game would only be able to address half the available vram. Has this changed with the latest Crossfire technology because only having 512MB available for such a setup would badly bottleneck performance when running games at 2560x1600?

Thanks for the article. You list the Radeon HD 4670 at about $70 however in doing some general checking the average price for the 512 MB model is $82 and $96 for the 1 GB model.

Actually the Radeon HD 4670 1 GB average price is more like $106.

Newegg has a 3850 up for $54.99, it's in the St. Patrick's special email.

I kept the 512MB 4870 because with two cards there's a $30 price spread between two 4870 1GB cards, instead of a $15 price spread as there is with a single card.

Yes, with CrossFire I believe each card can only address it's own vram. But really, two 512MB 4870's are still going to deliver a heck of a lot of performance and you won;t notice the vram deficit except in extreme situations or with specific titles that are graphics ram dependant.

We look to the bottom end of pricing becauswe that's what we're recommending. We don't recommend spending more.

THe RV740 looks to perform similarly compared to a Radeon HD 4850, so two of them will likely perform like a 4850 X2 and will likely give the 285 a serious run for it's money. Of course nothin'g official yet but that's the buzz.

@ cleeve: quite a moot point to my opinion. if you care for dual card setups, you spend the extra 30$ because you want performance at higher resolutions. Making yourself memory-constrained for saving less than 10% of your budget is quite silly imho.

small adittion: post above in answer to the first cleeve post.

Also, for single card you recommend the gtx 260 core 216, while in the sli setup you say: we recommend the older (192) card for being cheaper, same as for single card...

Is there actually a paid editor at Toms, or is that too expensive (just as an edit button to avoid double (triple!) posts)

Ouch! Well, it's all my fault for making some last-minute edits to keep the article current and *clearly* not being diligent enough in the cascading consequences of my changes.

When I wrote the article, the GTX 260 Core 192 was WAYYY cheaper than the Core 216, and the cheapest 4870 I could find was $200 making it difficult to recommend the 4870 1GB.

I will say I do disagree with you as to your dismissal of the 512MB 4870. In real world situations that extra RAM in the 1GB version doesn't make nearly the diffrence you're implying it does. At $30 cheaper for two, it's a viable option for sure.

I will look for more flubs though, and thanks for pointing that one out about the Core 192 card.

try to play gta iv with 4870 512MB in crossfire and tell me if it doesnt make any difference with the 4870 1gb in crossfire ^_^

The GTX 260 is cheaper than the 4850X2, and was even recommended at the lower price-point.

I don't get how the 4850X2 can be both cheaper and the same price as two 4850's. Plus the 4850 DID make the recommendation list this month. I think you forgot to delete one of those two sentances.

Sorry, I don't normally critique the writing here, but I got to that section and had to scratch my head.