This piece of news is pretty big. If you purchase an Intel X58 based motherboard for your Intel Core i7 you will be able to use both AMD/ATI’s Crossfire and Nvidia’s SLI capabilities with the appropriate video cards. Intel chipsets tend to be the best of the bunch and with this solution, you aren’t forced to make that decision of red team or green team; now you can choose the blue team and get both!

There are many hoops for motherboard manufacturers to jump through and since they are part of the Intel “X” chipsets, they will be expensive motherboards, but this is the step in the right direction.

I wonder how long it will be until we see this capability trickle down to the more mainstream chipset offerings.

Specifications wise, the 4870 and 4850 only differ in one area: core and memory clockspeeds. 750/900 (GDDR5) vs 625/993 (GDDR3). Everything else from transistor count to number of processors remain the same. The reason why the clockspeeds are so much higher for the 4870 is attributed to the default dual-slot cooler it comes with. More details? Check out the review from AnandTech.

It’s not a surprise to see how competitive the 4850 remains. It’s not that the 4870 is slow, it’s actually quite a bargain at $299 — it just doesn’t seem very appealing since the 4850 is so good!

Nvidia’s Geforce 9800 GTX+ for $229 is no match for the overall buffness of the ATI Radeon HD 4850. Not really surprising since Nvidia didn’t even believe the speed bump warranted a full numerical upgrade.

Interestingly, AnandTech pointed out how the Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB and the Geforce 8800 GT are at a disadvantage when it comes to pricing. They will need to either lower price or axe one of the cards from retail shelves.

Since Nvidia has no real answer to the AMD Radeon HD 4850, I guess we have new mid-range king.

The Geforce 8800 GT is a fine card at approximately $199 USD, but that’s months ago and we’re now looking ahead to the new “hotness”. The new AMD Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the next great card for that mid-range price point. The Tech Report has a great first look with AMD’s new card and I am impressed. It outpaces the newly priced Geforce 9800 GTX.

It’s a single slot and as much as I enjoy single slot cards, the high temperatures worry me a bit. Regardless, it looks like it’s our new mid-range king. Nvidia is trying to fight back with a overclocked and refined Geforce 9800 GTX+, but until we have numbers from that card and a competitive price: they’ve got nothing.

Those who have been following the video card war knows how dismal AMD (ATI) have been performing as of late. Well the AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 is changing all of that with its “2 GPUs on 1 PCB” video card. It’s a monster, but it does technically put AMD on the top despite the unconventional means of reaching there.

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