Had their launch gone off unopposed, AMD would have made a huge splash with the introduction of the Radeon HD 4850. Priced at $199 this card would have been a GeForce 8800 GT killer. Our testing reveals that the board runs up to 22% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT. But unfortunately for AMD, it appears that the Radeon HD 4850 won’t be going up against the GeForce 8800 GT. Instead, as a result of NVIDIA’s latest price cuts, the 4850 will be going head-to-head with the much mightier GeForce 9800 GTX.
This battle is a neck-and-neck race. In games like Quake Wars, F.E.A.R., and Call of Duty 4, our testing gave the edge to the 4850. But in Lost Planet DX10 and BioShock DX10 the GeForce 9800 GTX ran faster than the 4850 (in Company of Heroes, the 4850 and 9800 GTX traded wins). Meanwhile Crysis, HL2 Episode Two, and Oblivion were too close to call. Depending on which games you play (and perhaps certain levels in the same game) the edge could go to AMD or NVIDIA in our preliminary testing.