Introduction

When the Radeon 4850 was launched back in June we found it to be a very competitive product, the first in quite some time from AMD – in fact was able to compete with Nvidia’s models at the same price point. While the two cards have some different features, ATI being preferable for media playback and Nvidia for the potential of PhysX performance, the gaming results gave consumers a much wider choice when building a new system. The 4850 is obviously a mainstream card and competes with Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 GTX+ which leaves the newer GTX 260 and 280 unchallenged.

Today’s review product, the Radeon HD 4870, goes some way to rectifying AMD’s hole in the market as it is priced to challenge the GTX 260. We will be running the products through a variety of tests including gaming at 2560×1600, CrossFire and high definition playback to find out which company is most deserving of your hard earned cash.