A pleasant surprise for the masses came our way today; AMD chose to lift the NDA early on its latest-gen HD 4850 graphics cards, with the 4870 to get the lime light come the first week of July.

As such, coverage is already beginning to dribble in from around the web, and you can see our first article here where we test a pair of the new cards in Crossfire with a souped up system running at 4GHz to ensure there are no other bottlenecks.

I'll be sure to build on the below list of coverage over the next 12 hrs as the content comes rolling in.

- PC Perspective
- Hexus
- Techpowerup #1
- Techpowerup #2
- LegionHardware
- ComputerBase (Translated)
- PCGamesHardware (Translated)
- FiringSquad
- LegitReviews #1
- Phoronix
- Tech Report #1
- Hot Hardware
- Tech Report #2
- Anandtech
- Overclockers Club
- LegitReviews #2

We'll have our review of a pair of Sapphire HD 4850's in Crossfire go live in around an hour from now, with another article later on in the day comparing the performance of the cards in Crossfire with P45 (x8/x8) Vs. X48 (x16/x16) setups. We've some very interesting results to share with ya'all on that one - so stay tuned and keep an eye out.

Yours truly:-
What's great about the HD 4850 isn't just the fact that it offers excellent value for money in Crossfire, but also that the performance you get is the difference between playing games at 1920 x 1200 and not. While the HD 4850 on its lonesome is probably best for gaming at up to about 1680 x 1050, if you really want to up the ante and get some 1920 x 1200 or 2560 x 1600 gaming in, going Crossfire is definitely the right thing to do.

What AMD has on its side is the fact that Intel boards are Crossfire compatible, and what enthusiast doesn't have an Intel CPU with a supporting Intel chipset? - While the 700i series of chipsets from NVIDIA are popular, they have nowhere near the market share of Intel. Thanks to the price and the ease of setup, anyone can really get on the Crossfire wagon. And if you find yourself with a system as powerful as the one we've got here today from IBuyPower Australia, that's when the cards will really begin to shine.