The battle rages on with the new 4850 just hitting our shores and all information indicates that the 4850 is going to have a good run. As usual the ATI Range is far cheaper than nVidia’s especially when you compare the top end cards.

Currently that makes it the 4850 vs the GX-280.
With way more bang in the nVidia line for those of you willing to drop the salary paycheck or 2 on the 280 then by all means, even though performance wise these 2 cards match up fairly equally depending on the scenario, after having read a review on Tom’s Hardware (Links to 4870 vs 260, scores listed for the 4850 and 280 as well) bellow i included the score charts borrowed from Tom just to give you an idea of what is going on.

As you can see the new cards are not really even that much better than the older ones, price vs performance the 8800GT 512MB is still probably the best card you ca get. Personally I shall be waiting for the next BIG thing before spending my hard earned cash on the latest Phase, I will start to worry when i can no longer go into the games options and set everything on max.

As for prices you are looking at around R7000 for the 280 and around R4000 for the 4850, its up to you to then decide, is the R3000 difference really worth the performance, is it really that much better than you 8800 or 3850 (X2).

Author: Reme Le Hane - Cyburbia Computers