Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - high-end, and preliminary thoughts
Rounding it off, Lost Planet extracts a huge performance toll when run in DX10 mode. Twin-GPU '3870 X2 does better here, but only the £299- and £450-priced GeForce 9800 GX2 and GTX 280s really push the performance boat out.
Summary
Looking at both the mid-range and high-end benchmarks, the all-new Radeon HD 4850 is comfortably faster than the card it replaces, the Radeon HD 3870. Benchmark numbers are up, generally speaking, to GeForce 9800 GTX levels, and it's no wonder that NVIDIA's felt compelled to hacksaw pricing by 30 per cent, bringing it in line with the red team's new star.Clouding the high-end space further - and we'll include benchmarks from these three SKUs - are the $229 (£145) GeForce 9800 GTX+, $299 (£179) Radeon HD 4870, and $399 (£250) GeForce GTX 260. We'll be adding them to the comparison list for a larger round-up next week, as well as looking at varying CrossFire and SLI performance, especially with respect to the HD 4850 and GeForce 9800 GTX parts. Our HEXUS.bang4buck graph will be rolled out to determine which products offer the most performance-oriented value, so, please, head back for an in-depth look at the architecture and, of course, numbers.
Until then, the £125 Radeon HD 4850 has redefined what's possible in the mid-range space, so much so that NVIDIA's been forced to do something disturbing: reducing current prices by up to 30 per cent.
The winner from this latest round of GPU introductions and positioning is you, the consumer. You never had it so good...
