Damn, when I first heard about the GeForce 260 and 280 I thought it was checkmate. No one expected much of the new line of Radeons in the first place given ATI’s lackluster offerings lately, and combine that with the improvement in the 65nm 280 — I think I was justified in thinking so. But the Radeon 4850 came out a little later and jaws dropped. It offered nearly the performance of the 260, and at a huge discount. Now the 4870 has dropped and it nearly tops the 280, at half the price.
NVIDIA is taking evasive action, but to be honest it may be too late for this gamer. I switched over to a GeForce in my last system build, but if ATI is able to pull this kind of performance out of this chipset for such an incredible price, I may swing the other way next time I’m window-shopping at Newegg.