Euhm, 4850 is second least consuming card and GTX280 is tirth most consuming card.

//edit: that is in the techreport review, anandtech same thing, 4850 consumes lot less compare to single GTX280. Performance is sometimes very close to the GTX280

Kougar you should mention more clearly in your first post that you are talking about 4850 CF regarding power draw:p

in most games 4850 CF at 1920x1200 it's very close to GTX 280
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/14...ghz/index.html

Hm, I guess I did not specifically say I was talking about Crossfire in my earlier post, my apologies! I thought I had.

It only makes sense to compare power consumption if the cards perform similarly, so 4850 Xfire + GTX 280 would be a good matchup power-wise, but GTX 280 wins with less power/more performance.

Tweaktown has some interesting numbers, but they do not clearly state what AA/AF settings were used, if any. Waiting for some proper 9800GTX+, 4850, 4850 Xfire, 9800GTX+ SLI, GTX 280 reviews. If 4850 Xfire is this good, 9800GTX+ SLI may be better?

TT has no AA/AF used in all charts unless mentioned; here are the AA/AF results: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/14..._af/index.html

regarding

does 20W matter when 2x4850 cost €300 and 1xGTS 280 €500? In order to win back that €200 extra you spend on the GTX 280 you have to run your system at full load for quite some time;)
I don't care much about total power consumption; in order of importance:
1) Price
2) Performance
3) Noise
4) Power Usage

the GTX 280 fails at step 1) and doesn't have enough for 2) to make it worth it. Going further down the list is no longer necessary.
Building CF/SLI out of the box was never a preferred solution, and there are still plenty of games which don't scale, at all. But for the first time in years a CF product solution is actually interesting; this has not happened a lot in the past, if at all;)

HD4850 CF is ok for price €300, very ok for performance 2) maybe not the best for noise. having passed 1 & 2 there is no other solution which offers this performance at that price, so power consumption wise it has no contenders.

:-)

to complete your statement: It only makes sense to compare power consumption if the cards perform similarly cost approximately the same and are not overly noisy ;)

I never made any claims about it mattering, I just wanted to set the record straight since some people/reivews seemed to say that the 4850 was a power miser. In Crossfire, it really is anything but.

To be honest my list of preferences would exactly match yours in the same order of importance. If you are going to make a statement about the card overall, then yes I would agree. ;) But that wasn't my goal with my post.

4850 costs $199, have read some $30 MIRs exist (Not been able to find). Newegg also is selling them at volume pricing, buy 2x quantity get a volume discount. Can save up to $25.

199 U.S. dollars = 127.974277 Euros
we pay too much :D

I think it's 199$ U.S. without taxes, if you add taxes, our pricing in Europe should be plus-minus correct.

Radeon HD 4850 cards available on retail, benchmarked
 

As reported yesterday, ATI was forced to jump the gun with their Radeon HD 4850 release after a number of retailers in the Euro zone started selling them to the public before time. As a result, we get to see how the cards perform shortly after the release of the new GeForce GTX cards.

http://www.techspot.com/news/30558-r...nchmarked.html

Not all e-tailers charge sales tax in US. If they do not have any locations in-state then they do not need to collect tax. So if I buy one of these from Newegg, it would be tax free.

If you look at taxes, it makes the price discrepancy worse... VAT is absurdly high.

:/ Nerf artificially high prices in Europe then.