With the recent release of the new ATI 48XX GPU's we've seen something that we haven't seen for a while: Ati GPU's in a direct head to head competition with the offerings from NVIDIA. Not only in a price for performance standpoint, like usual, but from a performance standpoint.

The ATI 4870 GPU has been putting out synthetic benchmark numbers that rival the GTX-260; up and coming 4870x2 offerings are sure to put the GTX-280 by the side of the road from a performance standpoint.

We are lucky enough to have a Sapphire HD 4870 on hand to test, and today we're going to see if ATI has indeed managed to pull one out of the hat to level the playing field with the current offerings from NVIDIA.