With so much data presented on previous pages, we think we should summarize our review answering two questions: how is Sapphire HD 4870 compared to Radeon HD 4850 and how is Sapphire HD 4870 compared to its main competitor, GeForce GTX 260, especially now that nVidia is promoting a price cut on this model in order to make it a competitor to HD 4870.

In most scenarios Sapphire HD 4870 was between 20% and 30% faster than Sapphire HD 4850, but on some games like Quake 4 and Half-Life 2: Episode Two both cards achieved a similar performance, depending on the video configuration used.

Sapphire HD 4870 and GeForce GTX 260 achieved a similar performance in most scenarios. The only time that GeForce GTX 260 was faster than Sapphire HD 4870 was on Call of Duty 4 at 2560x1600 maxing out image quality settings (11% faster). In all other configurations on this game both cards achieved the same performance level.

Sapphire HD 4870 was faster than GeForce GTX 260 in some games. On Crysis it was around 15% faster when we set image quality settings to “high”, but both cards achieved the same performance when image quality was set at “low”. On Half-Life: Episode 2 HD 4870 was 6-8% faster when image quality was set at “low” and 19-23% faster when we maxed out image quality settings. And on Quake 4 HD 4870 was between 6.50% and 19% faster, depending on the video configuration.

You can see the performance difference between Sapphire HD 4870 and other high-end video cards by browsing the tables published on previous pages.

If you have around USD 300 to spend on a video card Radeon HD 4870 is certainly today your best option. As mentioned, it reaches the same performance as GeForce GTX 260 or better, and if you search carefully you can find it being sold cheaper than GeForce GTX 260.

Of course if you don’t have that much money and still want a high-end video card our recommendation is Radeon HD 4850, which can be currently found below the USD 200 mark in the USA and thus providing a terrific cost/benefit ratio for the average user.

A final trick: at this time Radeon HD 4870 will only run stable if you install Catalyst 8.6 drivers and a hotfix made available by AMD.