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.

The masses will find the Radeon release much more relevant however, considering the HD 4850 is a $200 part, opposed to the new GeForce price tags of $400+ for the lesser part and up to $650 for the flagship, single-GPU product.

You'll also be happy to learn that retailers are carrying the new Radeons already. Most notably Newegg is carrying numerous brands selling at the suggested retail price of $199.99. Definitely not bad for a card that performs like a (formerly) much more expensive GeForce 9800 GTX:



See more preliminary benchmarks here - our full review is coming up next week. Admittedly, we were also caught in the dark with the early release situation, in the meantime, enjoy.