AnandTech and The TechReport have their reviews up. They like it. It’s a fast card, but it is a multi-GPU card and multi-GPU cards only flex their muscle with proper driver support. So if you’re willing to spend $549.99 USD and willing to deal with the fact that not all games will benefit from it, the AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 is a prime choice.

Personally, I would still go for AMD’s Radeon HD 4850 — it’s a steal for the asking price of ~$169 CAD.

What a surprise! An arbiterary barrier was preventing DX9 video cards to experience the highest fidelity possible for Crysis?! Who could have imagined such a travesty?!

Well, with Crysis: Warhead, Crytek have stated that they’re allowing DX9 video cards to experience the former DX10 exclusive special effects. If they’re up to snuff, that is.

I will be able to partake in all the graphical glory just as soon as I get a new beefy video card into my PC.

So after seeing how competitive the Radeon HD 4870 was, I bet it was getting awfully difficult for NVIDIA to price their new video cards at $649.99 USD and $399.99 USD respectively. NVIDIA’s only course of action was a hefty price cut. NVIDIA cut the Geforce GTX 280’s price down to $499.99 USD and the 260’s price to around $329.99 USD.

In other news, Intel is apparently planning to cut prices on its processors as well. The details of the cuts are non-existent, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re shopping for a new PC in the near future.

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.

It looks like AMD and NVIDIA are gearing up for a GPU war next month. That is if rumors are to be believed.

Here’s the rumored break down for AMD:

• Radeon HD 4850 - Hard Launch on June 18th or June 16th for about $229
• Radeon HD 4870 - Soft launch on June 25th for about $349
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Q3 2008 for about $529 - $549

NVIDIA’s breakdown which includes the GT200 based cards (formerly known as GeForce 9900 series):

• GeForce GTX 200 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 260 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 280 - Sneak peak at Computex (June 3 - 7)

As for performance? We only have preliminaries for the AMD cards.

Lots of people are upset over this Metal Gear Online registration. Me? I’m a patient fellow. The page times out, spits out plenty of errors and bores me with its long load times, but I keep on trucking. Gameplay starts in three days and fortunately for me, I finally registered after two days of on and off trying. Konami was terribly annoying when it came to username and password creation though.

 Just check this shit out:

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It was supposed to come soon, but how soon? Well apparently, July is the month where the GeForce 8800 GT’s successor will debut. The GeForce 9800 GT will apparently be another die shrink of the venerable G92 core which was already a die shrink of the G80 — yeah, it’s not a brand new processor. In addition, it appears that the GeForce 10 name will be put aside. Recent rumors suggest that the GeForce 9900 series will instead be used to represent the upcoming GT200.

Ugh. I’m beginning to lose track of all these video card name changes.

The third piece of the GeForce 9 series puzzle finally launched today with some reviewsto boot. The GeForce 9800 GTX is essentially faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB and the GeForce 8800 GTX, but it’s not as fast as the GeForce 8800 Ultra. The most noticeable addition is the ability to put this baby into a triple SLI configuration.

Underwhelming.

I called the GeForce 9 series “severely disappointing“, but that may be a bit harsh. The GeForce 9600 GT isn’t bad. It’s actually quite comparable to the GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB if you like your games with high image quality settings. If you can find it for sub-$180: it’s a great deal. As for me, there isn’t much on the PC to tempt me to buy a new video card yet.

$599.99 for video card. Well, actually, it’s for two video cards. The GeForce 9800 GX2 is actually two lowere clocked GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB in one card. What is the advantage of this? You can have the benefits of SLI without an SLI capable motherboard and you can put two of these video cards together in SLI for Quad SLI fun.

You can read the reviews of these behomoths over at HardOCP and AnandTech, but be warned: there’s plenty of overkill.

Disappointingly, this GeForce 9 series is slowly becoming nothing more than the GeForce 8 series rebranded with a slight bump in speed. At this point in time, the GeForce 8800 GT is still the video card to get; especially if it’s under $200 CAD.

The GeForce 9600 GT launched a few days ago, but what about the mid-high ranged card or the true high end card? They are coming soon. Very soon! The GeForce 9800 GT and its bigger brother, the GeForce 9800 GTX, will apparently land between end of March and April. The dual-GPU ultra high end GeForce 9800 GX2 will launch within the month, on March 11th, 2008.

I’m looking forward to the GeForce 9800 GT. It’s fitting the bill of being a second generation DirectX 10 video card; just like how the GeForce 7800 GT (my current card) was a 2nd generation DirectX 9 video card. For the right price and performance, I may actually upgrade to it when it’s released.