looking at the numbers the HD4850 is faster than the 9800gtx in most games but still not in crysis. however i would agree with people that say it is a better buy than the 9800gtx and it should be a tiny bit faster then the 9800gtx+ save the games it is lower in (the 9800gtx+ will have a noticeable lead in crysis).

however what is the most impressive about this card is how well it can handle higher resolutions and how little of a hit it takes with AA enabled. however once more games take advantage of the shadder power available the card will come crashing down as far as AA performance goes. it performs well now due to it's multitude of shadders that are not being used by the game to render textures so it can use them for AA. once you use those up then AA performance will take the same hit the 2900's and 3800's saw. but in today's games it is impressive.

for the price this card will be extremely attractive and will be the best card in the price range. however this is not a GTX 260 competitor, some people seem to think that this card is that fast. it's not. and i doubt the 4870 will beat the GTX 260 as well.

and yes Crossfire is fast in select games but please let us stop hearing about how much better it is than the GTX 280. you can not compare dual GPU results with that of single gpu.

however impressive card!