I am sure those who are interested in this release have been reading all of the online reviews of this card, but I figured you would want to see
something from someone who isn't getting free shit from the manufacturers provide a quick and unbiased review. If not, blow me.

First off, the card runs way hot right out of the box. Idle temps at 68c with no load and the card pwersaved to 500/750, at full load, running 3 windows of rthdribl.exe it heats up to 91c with an ambient temp of 21c, ambient case temp of 29. And that is in an Antec 900 with 4 120mm fans and one big 200mm on top. This doesn't bode well for a stock cooler or the other components stuffed in your case. Especially if you don't have good airflow.

I pulled the card out and removed the stock cooler and cleaned off the junk thermal paste they had gobbed on. (Why don't these manufacturers use thermal paste correctly.) I got it all cleaned up and applied some Arctic Alumina Ceramic (really the best for GPU cooling) and mounted an ThermalTake DuOrb cooler. I put the card back in and bam. Idle temps down to where they should be, 34c at idle and running rthdribl.exe X3 43c max. Not a bad reduction in heat IMHO. well over 50%.

On to the testing. The test machine here is a basic workstation, Intel DP35DPM, C2Q9450, 4gb DDR2 1066, 2 300g Seagates in Raid0 and 2 750gb Seagates SA. Dual boot XP Pro 32/Vista 64 Ult.

First off the card scored an impressive 15447 in 3Dmark 06 and 6847 in 3DMark Vantage straight GPU score. Now bare in mind this was also overclocked to 700/1150 and 1280x1024. Even overclocked byt 75/150 the temps never got over 43c. Not too shabby for a brand new card and reference drivers!

In Vanguard, it runs just a hair shy of 110fps with everything maxed at 1680x1050.
In AoC it runs from 56-91 in Eg. mntns with everything on high, particles on self only set to high and 4xMSAA/16 AF with shadows high/everything.
Crysis demo bench it really shined and turned in an impressive 39fps with everything turned on high.
I do have to add that if you are playing ANY of these games on an older model card, you will not believe how beautiful these games are
when you are able to run the games the way they were intended. Just incredible.
As a side note, this card performs BETTER when AA/AF are enabled than is does without. Go figure since in the past this was the death of ATI cards like the 2900XT...

Bottom line, for $200 this card can not be beat. In fact, I liked it so much I just ordered an 4870 and after I sell my 8800GTX will probably order another for Crossfire on my gaming system.

Ellesar was correct, ATI got it right this time. and for $250 less, you can pair these up and get better than GTX 280 performance.

_________________

_____
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
_____
VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Man, too bad I bought an nVidia board. I have the ASUS P5N32-E SLI Deluxe. I just got it in January. I wonder if it's time for an upgrade?? I like the nVidia GeForce 260 cards tho... and what about the 9800GTX+? For 230$, surely those are good yah?

The 4850 beats the 9800GTX+ in almost every bench so I am sure the 4870 will utterly smoke it and for $60 more that is a great deal.

Nvidia cards at this time are not a good price vs Performance buy.

The only thing that brings them close together is the added cost of an aftermarket cooler, but for me it doesn't matter what card I buy, I always pull the factory cooler off, put it in the original box with all the other stuff taht came with it (in case I need to RMA it) and put a good cooler on.

What I am hoping for is that my Thermalright HR03 R600 cooler from my 2900XT will fit so I won't have to buy a new one...

Here's a couple of charts from Toms hardware...

_________________

_____
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
_____
VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Might just get an ATI board then... can Intel CPUs work with them? I've got a quad core 6600.

Not only do they work with them, they have a partner relationship and support Crossfire. Definitely the way to go if you're going the route of the Intel chipsets (which I personally recommend right now). SLI is supported only by nforce chipsets, which of late, have been dogshit since the 680i was released. Buggy and unstable in many cases. The 790i shows promise, but isn't up to par with current Intel offerings, especially with newer Intel processors with increased FSB.

The one advantage that nforce has is the unlinked EPP memory settings. I LOVE that feature, but it's not worth the hassle.