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Microsoft is offering a $50 mail-in rebate on the Elite through October 5.
Nobody likes a mail-in rebate, but if you're the patient type who doesn't mind waiting to get your cash back on your purchase, Microsoft will send you $50 if you buy the Xbox 360 Elite between now and October 5 (this is for U.S. customers only).
While you'll have to fill out all the requisite paperwork to get the discount, that mail-in rebate drops the price of the Elite--which only a short time ago cost $400--down to $250. Details of the rebate are here.
As other blogs have pointed out, that $50 might come in handy to buy an HDMI cable, Wi-Fi adapter, or a game. All we can say is, thank you, Sony, for dropping the price of the PS3 to $299. There's nothing like a good price war to keep things interesting in the game-console space.
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(Source: Joystiq via Major Nelson)

As a standalone 3D graphics card, and depending on the game, AMD's new $199 ATI Radeon HD 4850 is very competitive with Nvidia's $229 GeForce 9800 GTX+. What's potentially more exciting is that the 4850 also seems to scale better in dual-card Crossfire mode than anything Nvidia has for the same price. It's also only a single-slot card, which gives you more flexibility in the kind of system you can use it with. Physical convenience aside, if the price on the 4850 falls to the $150 range (which is very possible), it will be time to get legitimately excited about the sheer value found in this new card. Right now, it's only a pretty good standalone part. If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive dual-card upgrade, however, the Radeon HD 4850 is worth getting excited about right away.

The Radeon HD 4850 chip is AMD's second 55 nanometer part, and on paper, it seems to compare well with the GeForce 9800 GTX+.

ATI Radeon HD 4850 GeForce 9800 GTX+
Price $199 $229
Manufacturing process 55nm 55nm
Core clock 625MHz 738MHz
Stream processors 800 128
Stream processor clock NA 1,836MHz
Memory 512MB 512MB
Memory speed 993MHz 1.1GHz
The specifications to notice here is the stream processor count and the stream processor clock speed. The stream processors paths are essentially where the 3D graphics magic happens. Therein the card processes all of the geometry, the various shaders, and other components of the scene. It's also where the card-based computing takes place, about which Nvidia has been making a lot of noise over the past few months. AMD has its own implementation of GPU processing, which we'll get to shortly.

We wish we could track down the shader clock speed for the Radeon HD 4850. The driver software doesn't report it, and we couldn't get AMD to provide us with a number. Its 800 streams look impressive compared with the GeForce 9800GTX+ 120 count, but that might not matter as much if the Radeon HD 4850's speed is significantly slower than the 9800's 1,836MHz rating. The results in our performance charts make us think that whatever Radeon HD 4850's stream speed is, that's probably the case.

ATI has given Nvidia some staunch competition on the 3D card front the past six months or so, but with the dual-chip GeForce GTX 295, Nvidia has raced back to the top of the performance pile. At $500 for a boxed version (from Nvidia's board partners), the GTX 295 is aimed at serious PC gamers, but it's also the best value among high-end boards, taking out the best chips from ATI. This card requires a beefy PC to run it because of significant power demands, but for anyone with the financial and electrical wherewithal to put the GTX 295 to work, you'll enjoy the best 3D hardware currently on offer.

Like its primary competition, the ATI Radeon HD 4870X2, the GeForce GTX 295 uses the familiar two-chips, one-card model we've seen from both Nvidia and ATI in the past. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 has been popular component in a few recent high-end gaming PCs, and with support for multiple graphics chips and graphics cards so prevalent in PCs these days, these dual-chip cards provide gamers with a relatively easy way to set up a quad GPU configuration.

The popularity of ATI's card had to do with the fact that it outperformed Nvidia's previous high-end behemoth, the $600 single chip GeForce GTX 280, for roughly $100 to $150 less. The GeForce GTX 295 closes both of those gaps, and also offers some noticeable power consumption savings.

AMD's aggressive pricing of its high-end Radeon cards surely contributed to Nvidia bringing the GeForce GTX 295 in for under $600. Nvidia suggested $500 as the starting price for this card, and retailers seem to be following that line so far. This is roughly the same as the price for stock Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards.

Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 Asus EAHD4870X2
Price $500 $479
Manufacturing process 55nm 55nm
Core clock 576MHz 750MHz
Stream processors 240 (2) 800 (2)
Stream processor clock 1.24GHz NA
Memory 1792MB 2GB
Memory speed 2.0GHz DDR3 3.66GHz DDR 5
Comparing the speeds and specs above might at first glance seem to give the Radeon the engineering advantage over the Nvidia card. Nvidia uses slower, older RAM, and less of it, and both its core clock speed and the number of stream processors (the processing pipelines on the chip that handle various kinds of data requests simultaneously) are lower as well. We suspect Nvidia has two less obvious advantages at work that help its performance.

One is its manufacturing process. The GTX 295 uses two 55-nanometer GTX 200 graphics chips, and cramming two of its older 65-nanometer GTX 200 chips onto one card would have been a power consumption nightmare. We also have no information from ATI on the speed of its stream processors. Our suspicion is that they're significantly slower than the 1.24GHz stream clock on each chip in the GTX 295.

If you analyze the various components in the name "EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked," you can actually learn a bit about its provenance. At its core you'll find the GeForce GTX 260, an Nvidia 3D chip design released in June of 2008. "Core 216" refers to the fact that this is the second issue of this chip, with 216 processing cores, compared with 192 in the original. That it is "Superclocked" means that EVGA has tweaked this $260 card's clock speed to eke out more performance. Despite all of that speed boosting, we found this card is actually very power efficient. Unfortunately, efficiency in 3D cards doesn't typically translate to speed, and if you spend just a little bit more you'll find a significantly faster graphics card powered by ATI.

EVGA Geforce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2
Price $259 $299
Manufacturing process 55nm 55nm
Core clock 576MHz 625MHz (2)
Stream processors 216 800 (2)
Stream processor clock 1242 MHz NA
Memory 898MB 2GB
Memory speed 1GHz DDR3 933MHz DDR3
Like most cards in this price range, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked (chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo), is a double-wide card that connects directly to your PC's power supply, in this case via two six-pin PCI Express power connectors. Unlike the competing midrange card from ATI, Radeon HD 4850 X2, this EVGA card has only a single 3D chip. The only Nvidia dual-chip card is the very high-end GeForce GTX 295. We love that card in its price category, but it's certainly not the most affordable product out there, nor is it appropriate for those of you with smaller monitors. As you'll see in our charts, regardless of the number of GPUs onboard, the GTX 260 Core 216 isn't quite up to par with the other cards at or around this price.

Crysis (Assault Harbor) (DirectX 10, 64-bit, very high, 4x AA) (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,400x960

1,680x1,050

1,920x1,080
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2
29
25
22
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
28
23
20
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SE
25
21
18
Far Cry 2 (Ranch Medium) (DirectX 10, very high, 4x AA) (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,440x900

1,680x1,050

1,920x1,200
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2
87
79
72
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
71
63
56
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SE
68
60
52
Left 4 Dead (DirectX 9, 4x AA, 16x AF, very high) (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,440 x 900

1,680 x 1,050

1,920 x 1,200
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2
164
147
128
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
158
137
115
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SE
151
129
108
Of the three cards we tested, the GTX 260 Core 216 is the slowest. Its frame rates on all but Crysis are playable, so it's by no means incapable, but current relative speeds also provide a guide for which cards might perform well on more demanding titles down the road. All other things being equal, we expect this EVGA card will hit its playability limit on future titles more quickly than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 will.

Power consumption (in watts)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Load

Idle
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 SE
318
167
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
362
172
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2
387
217
If it's not the fastest card in its price range, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked can at least brag about its power efficiency. At load or at idle, it consumed less power than either the ATI card or its higher-end GeForce GTX 280 linemate. We're particularly impressed by its efficiency at load, consuming a full 50 watts less than the GTX 280, which was only slightly faster on our performance charts. If you're feeling mindful of your power bill and the environment, and don't mind sacrificing a few frames per second, this EVGA card may suddenly look more attractive.

That balance of power efficiency and performance actually gives this EVGA card a certain appeal for higher-end, general-purpose desktops. Likely, you would still want to match this card with at least a 550- or 600-watt power supply, assuming you pair it with a quad-core or fast dual-core CPU. You won't find a budget PC with such a high wattage PSU, but you might be able to sneak it into a recently purchased PC around $1,000 or so. The higher-end cards compared here will likely need at least a 700 watt PSU to ensure enough power headroom.

As with most modern 3D cards, you can also use the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 for home theater purposes, although it's probably overkill for a dedicated, nongaming, living room PC. It will play encrypted HD video like Blu-ray Discs, and even comes with a DVI-to-HDMI adapter in the box. You need to connect the audio to the motherboard audio chip or your PC sound card to send audio over the HDMI port, however. This card will also support two DVI monitors, which is only half the support of the four-DVI-port-equipped Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2.

And, of course, this card supports Nvidia's SLI multicard technology, as well as hardware-accelerated PhysX, CUDA-enabled software, and all of the other so-called "visual computing" features Nvidia loves to brag about. A few parallel computing features, like the agnostic zooming features in Adobe's Photoshop CS 4, are useful, but we have yet to see any gaming or widespread software implementation to convince us of GPU-based computing's mainstream utility. We suspect it's only a matter of time, but by then you'll likely have a whole new array of 3D cards to choose from.

Test bed configuration
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit; 3.2GHz Intel Core i7 965; Intel X58 chipset; 4GB 1,066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; 150GB 10,000rpm Western Digital Raptor hard drive