I'm really shocked how many peeps discuss the performance of a card while not even owning the damn thing... with each release it's the same thing : underperforming; too pricey;.... bla bla bla... the GTX280 is the worlds fastest single GPU card... there's nothing more to it and 99flake it's not HOT running at all... Secondly if Nvidia wants to milk it out, who's the dumb ass then ? the user who buys it on the release day... pure marketing is the key word...and you got trapped in the web... And we all know that a few months later on prices will be more reasonable... so if you want a brand new product prepare to cash out big time !!

So first look in the mirror and then ask yourself some questions first...

I'm pretty happy for ATI that they got a winner on their hands, as they needed it... now it's AMD's turn to release some heavy clockable crunching Phenom and the market will be in balance again...


and rightfully so. This card isn't like the 6x00 series that spanked them or like the 9500-9800 series that smacked Nvidia's paltry 5x00 around. This is a close competition. No matter what the fanboi's on both sides think, these cards are pretty well matched to each other. You'll see Nvidia raking up one set of tests and DAAMMIT the other. Really, it'll come down to whom forks over the most for their developer programs again (which gives a very slight edge to Nvidia with TWIMTBP) just like before.

We'll see what happens, but Nvidia simply lost their fat margins. Don't delude yourself into anything more. Don't delude yourself into thinking that they're losing money. Oh, and don't delude yourself into thinking the fight is won.

I have been testing an HD4850 card and I assure you it could easily warm your pork and beans too... the entire chassis gets warm to the touch in the area around the card.

You want more pixels, you have to pay the price. More pixels = more power + more heat it seems.

The performance has been impressive however - now if only the drivers would let Vantage run properly... Perhaps by launch all will be well.

I don't think people would really need much dissuading, the GTX280 is underperforming overpriced, over-hot tat.

AMD is allowing these previews for 2 reasons: 

The hardware is already good enough to go head to head with GTX280 and in many cases beat it to the curb, so it can only get better.

This gives the driver team a preview of which games will be benchmarked, allowing them to focus optimizing the new CF enhanced ability of the R700 for those games.

AMD gave the go ahead for a LIMITED review, and set up some rulles for it?
so whats the problem?

NVIDIA just dropped the price of the GTX 280 to $499, thus making it (much) more attractive, so perhaps this is a deliberate move from AMD to dissuade people from buying a GTX 280, and encourage them to wait for a 4870 X2.