AMD today partially lifted an embargo that prevented hardware review sites from publishing reviews of its upcoming HD 4850 GPU.

Despite previous confusion, it is now confirmed that the GPU will come with 800 stream processors, 965 million transistors, 40 texture units, a core that is clocked at 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory at 1986 MHz. The maximum power consumption of the card is rated at 110 watts.

In terms of performance, the 4850 goes head to head with Nvidia’s 9800 GTX (which was dropped to $199 today). Reviews published today indicated that the two GPUs deliver a close race in terms of gaming performance. Most reviews we saw today saw the 4850 ahead of the 9800 GTX in games such as Call of Duty 4, FEAR and in the 3D Mark vantage benchmark under Windows Vista. The 4850 came in behind the 9800 GTX in Crysis, ET: Quake Wars, Stalker, Ghost Recon and Grid.

Some may consider Nvidia as keeping the lead and even extending it with the release of the 9800 GTX+ GPU for $229 graphics cards.

But first reviews indicate that AMD has a solid product on its hands. The 4850 version will be announced on June 23 and become available on June 25, according to our sources, followed by the 4870 on July 8 and the 4870 X2 in mid-August.  

Example reviews:
Tweaktown
Guru3D

Impressive

Jun 19, 2008 14:46     

Looks like ATI might be back in the game after an iffy 3000 launch, if their not-quite-top-of-the-line Processor matches nVidia's best offering, the 4870 might outdo it.
Revrant report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

RE: iffy 3000 launch

Jun 19, 2008 16:45     

The 3000 didn't have an iffy launch. It did a great job. The problem was actually having to make up for quite some ground after the iffy 2000 launch. :) Good thing they did it again with 4000 for a nice comeback. One more step like this and they'll be fighting for the performance crown in single GPU cards (where it all matters most), hopefully holding AMD in a $u$tainable po$ition to make it's own good steps to fight Intel. Long live competition for our own good! ;D

nke report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

Long Live Competition!!!!

Jun 19, 2008 21:56     

I agree whole heartedly with nke. The better the competition, the better for all of us. Too bad that ended in the HD video disc arena. :(
Narg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

RE: iffy 3000 launch

Jun 20, 2008 01:46     

I haven't seen any reviews of the 4870, but I highly doubt AMD/ATI will hold the single-GPU performance crown anytime soon. Nvidia's GTX 280 will be quite a bit faster than the dual-GPU Geforce 9800GX2 in many games. And even AMD has said they are going after the mid-level marker and not the high-end. That said, AMD has truly made up for the terribly disappointing 2007 with the Geforce 8800GTX maintaining the lead for so long. It's an exciting time in the graphics industry.

loosely_coupled report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

"Nvidia's GTX 280 will be quite a bit faster than t...

Jun 21, 2008 19:44     

"Nvidia's GTX 280 will be quite a bit faster than the dual-GPU Geforce 9800GX2 in many games." How quickly this was shown to be wishful thinking, eh?
Marady report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1