I’ve been thinking of putting together a new system recently, and for the video card, I was almost certainly going to go for a GeForce GTX 460 — around $200 is the sweet spot for a good mid-budget GPU, and the 460 has been holding up to its competition for some time. But with the release of the new AMD Radeon 6850 and 6870, I might have to switch back to Radeon once more.
The early reviews have the 6870 ($239) and 6850 ($179) giving the 460 the business, and providing quite a lot of power at both those price points. Once the 6850 drops below $150, it’ll be a popular card for dual-GPU setups, just as its predecessor the 5850 was.
Check out the detailed reviews at Guru3D, HardOCP, and PC Perspective. They all seem to say that the 6850 is a huge bargain, though it’s far from a blowout; the GeForce 460 has had its price lowered a bit and still provides a lot of punch. But if I had two bills, I’d probably go with the 6850 right now.