$109 8800gt

[Mehen]

Yeah it looks like the 4850 is around 8800GT/9800GTX performance. The 9800GTX+ is just a slight bit ahead. But being 55nm now, the GTX+ should overclock bigtime, and I would imagine we will see stock overclocks putting the GPU at over 800mhz (738 stock for the +, 675 stock for the vanilla).
$229 for the GTX+, $199 for the GTX.

I'll still wait for GTX 280/260 respins before I upgrade. And a bigger monitor - at 1280 my 9600GT is fine.

[Evildead666]

I just had a thought :

There had been a lot of speculation up til now about the number of shaders on the 4xxx series of cards, 480 and 800...why can't it be both ?
Well all now know that the 4xxx are made up of 160 Vec5 cores, and 160x3=480.
160x5=800=number of shaders .

We saw some manufacturer come up with e 3x3850 card a short while ago...so 3x4850 on a single card is possible, and CrossfieX scales well up to 3 chips, like Nvidia...which means a single card with 480 Vec5 processors, and 2400 shaders is possible...
I did read somewhere that F@H was very happy with the power of the 480 cores on ATi cards, and since all partners with ATi can make their own cards...
2 or 3 of these 3x cards would make a hell of a F@H machine, and would easily take Nvidia to the cleaners...in Pro circles especially, but also for high end gamers...

Food for thought...

edit : and please dear god, let them have shared memory finally