That's not exciting as it sounds though. The few sites that have decided to post some content are saying that they are not quite ready to give a full fledged review at this time. Legit Reviews for example, can not get their RV770 driver installed properly. Their little 4 page preview also contains some pics of the Sapphire HD 4850 and some ATI slides from the Cinema 2.0 event.
PC Perspective was a little bit luckier with their MSI HD 4850. They were able to get their drivers installed and they had enough time to test 2 games and 2 3DMark benchmarks.
TweakTown was super prepared I guess. They have an 11 page review up that features 2 HD 4850's in CrossFire. It seems like 2 HD 4850's come close to the performance of a single GTX 280 in a few games for about $240 less than a single GTX 280. That's good those for those that already own a CrossFire motherboard, but for people like me..that is about how much I would have to spend to buy a new motherboard that supports CrossFire.
Guru3D has a huge 20 page HD 4850 CrossFire review ready for your eager consumption. The one PowerColor HD 4850 and another HD 4850 from a manufacturer I have never ever heard of... Force3D. Apparently they have been around since January 2008. I will get all of Force3D's products added as soon as I can by the way...
HotHardware has a short one pager featuring the results from 2 games and 2 3DMark benchmarks. The article also contains some information that I will talk about in my next news post .
I found the following quote from the Tech Report's Scout Wasson to be funny, yet true:
...What remains now is for us poor slobs in the press to get the products tested and to publish our findings as soon as we reasonably can...
...At press time, the precise effects of these events on my health were unclear, but doctors expressed grave concern.
This news post is getting too long. I did not think this many sites would take advantage of the NDA removal. Here are some quick links to finish this post off:
techPowerUp MSI HD 4850 review.
Member
I'd never heard of Force3D either. But at least the card itself looks nice.
(Okay, I admit...I'm a sucker for pretty card armor...)
Member
"how much I would have to spend to buy a new motherboard that supports CrossFire"
nope: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130172
Oh your on intel? well yeah I guess.
If P45 boards start showing up you could probably get one supporting (8X, 8X) crossfire for $150 pretty quick.
ATi signing crossfire to Intel and AMD renewing that contract was probably the best thing that could've happened for graphics cards. Nvidia chipsets right now really are terrible.
Senior Member
Senior Member
P.S. http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1472/7/page_7_benchmarks_crysis/index.html
P45 boards are rather bad ideas for the CF ideas for these things .
Member
Why do I see eight of them on Newegg now?