It seems to be beating the X2 in some tests, and that double card's more expensive. Surely that represents good value?

The X2 uses CrossFire to link the two 4870 GPUs and its performance shows that CrossFire suffers all sorts of strange problems. When it works well its good but when it goes wrong it is a stinker and with an X2 you cannot turn CrossFire off so you're lumbered.

I did not understand a word of that, why not show some pretty pictures of games so we can see how awesome these card are

Why does the GTX280 score almost 4x as much on the CPU score?

Ahh, the Sapphire cooler really works then <snerk>.

I have a 4850, but went with the HIS IceQ cooler and it's much cooler and quieter.

Anyway, it's an interesting respin in the "just above £200" range, but the 4850 is in the "just above £100" range for the one with the IceQ cooler, and is perfectly capeable of driving, say, Fallout 3 at 1280*1024 on an E6600 with 2GB RAM at deacent detail levels.

Nvidia shifts the PhysX workload from the CPU to the GPU which mightily increases the CPU score on high end Nvidia graphics cards. Unless you plan on playing games with loads of PhysX features you'd we well advised to focus on the GPU element of the test.

£300 on a gfx card is madness! I paid £70 for my 4830 (quidco for teh win) and it might not be the fastest kid on the block but will play happily in 1680x

I suppose I could Xfire it if I had a mobo but why bother - the mobo would cost just as much...

"Lay a 4870 next to a 4890 and we defy you to tell the two cards apart:"

Other than the obviouis picture, the capacitors in the bottom right are different sizes

what do i win?

I bought 2 Dell home machines with ATi 3650 cards (1 for dad, the other for a friend), BOTH had incorrectly installed ATI drivers that caused errors and crashes.

The problem is the piss-poor way that Dell install them, not necessarily the hardware. The thing to try is a complete un-install of the Dell supplied drivers. Then use DriverCleaner or similar to ensure that all the registry keys have been removed as well. Then restart, and then install a new fresh, Catalyst from ATI. Do NOT use Windows Update or a Dell driver. That should clear up the issues - well fingers crossed! It did for those two machines mentioned above.

If not, then Dell has this annoying tendency to use PSUs that are severely under-powered for the hardware (my Dell Studio not XPS is a quad core, 8GB ram with ATi 3650 and had a pathetic 350W PSU). Try changing the PSU to a 500W min, decent quality PSU. Should help no end or see here: http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonhd4800/requirements.html for power requirements for the HD4800 series.

Dell isn't in the business of selling PSU at retail, and tests true PSU capacity from it's suppliers. Therefore, what you're getting with a Dell PSU rated for 350W tends to be one that's actually capable of it, and the whole integrated system also tested to be lower consumption which makes sense as you wouldn't expect a quad core box with a 3650 in it to reach 275W peak, let alone 350W.

Typical power requirements cited by video card manufacturers are to shift the burden and expense of instable equipment to the owner, how easily they can tell someone to throw more money at a problem because there are so many PSU out there that don't live up to their ratings.

On the other hand, a modern system with a 4870 or 90 video card in it ought to have higher than 350W PSU powering it, but if/when the day comes that Dell integrated (term loosely used, not meaning soldered onto the mainboard) these 4890 into systems they will provide a beefy enough PSU to at least handle the one installed card even if it cannot support Crossfire.