ATI has made a strong comeback this time round, this is partly made possible by NVIDIA being complacent, although the green men are still hanging on, but barely.

The performance by a Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire setup easily gives it the VR-Zone Best Value award. For just shy of US$ 400, you're getting performance that's slightly faster than NVIDIA's flagship in most instances. The downside of running ATI CrossFire would be the power consumption and heat output though. ATI's drivers still needs some polishing for CrossFire setups. During the course of our testing, we noticed strange and random artifacts appearing in our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark, as well as micro-stutters which occur very randomly as well in other softwares.

Awarded to ATI Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire

The GeForce GTX 260 896MB has shown that it is no pushover against the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. Considering both cards in full factory form without any user modifications (manual fan speed adjustments, etc.), the NVIDIA card gains the upper hand with its considerably lower operating temperatures and lower power consumption. It should be noted that all the manufacturers are using the NVIDIA reference board or the ATI reference board, and differences would actually come down to what's included in the package. Furthermore, with price adjustments done by NVIDIA last week, the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 now have the same suggested retail price of US$ 299.

Based on the cards we have in our labs today for the GeForce GTX 260 and the Radeon HD 4870 from XFX and Force3D and Sapphire, we would be giving the VR-Zone Best Buy award to the XFX GeForce GTX 260 896MB after very careful consideration.

Awarded to XFX GeForce GTX 260 896MB

Needless to say, the VR-Zone Performance Award goes to the ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire setup which we put together both the Force3D and the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB cards. You get the best performance definitely, but with it comes a big jump in power consumption. You may want to consider adjusting fan speeds manually on the CrossFire setup to keep temperatures down within your casing as well.

Awarded to ATI Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire

Despite being run over by the Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire, and the Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire in most instances, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 still retains the performance crown for a single card solution. Dual card solutions should be outperforming single card parts. For example, running a pair of NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS in SLI is sure to outperform a single GeForce 8800 GTX. You can put two GeForce GTX 260 in SLI and it'll eat your GeForce GTX 280 for breakfast too. If you absolutely need the fastest card today in a single card solution, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 1GB is your answer. The price for the GeForce GTX 280 has also been adjusted downwards to US$ 499. In comparision, a faster dual card Radeon HD 4870 solution will set you back by just shy of US$ 600.

It's a good thing that AMD/ATI managed to stage a comeback in the graphics world. If not for them, we would be seeing nothing but absurdly high prices on NVIDIA's high-end cards (and possibly even the mid-range models). The RV770 has proved its worth against the aging G92 and the new GT200 architectures. If the scaling performance on the Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire setup is to be replicated on the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and ATI fixes its heat issues, we believe NVIDIA would not have any answer to the R700 for at least a few months to come.