This is the near-final specs of the next generation of video cards. I have compiled this from several rumour sites but have some hard information in terms of this news article (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/24/gtx260-280-revealed) which uses Nvidia NDA information, a forum post by Folding@Home testers on pre-release hardware that confirms RV770 to have 480SPs (http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,644062/News/480_Shader_fuer_AMDs_RV770-Grafikkarten_bestaetigt/) and a confirmation of GDDR5 use by ATI (http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+Looks+to+Qimonda+For+GDDR5+Memory/article11855.htm). The RV770 codename was confirmed in the PCI ID list for the Linux ATI Catalyst 8.5 driver. A lot of the other figures, although confirmed by multiple independent sources, were taken from http://www.hardware-infos.com.

Remember, all of this is subject to rapid change, especially the clock speeds, as very little is publicly confirmed.I have put question marks next to figures I have only seen in one source.

Also bear in mind that the specs of RV770/R700 and GT200, especially the clocks cannot readily be compared as a measure of performance to each other or R600/RV670 or G80/G90.

Early performance estimates indicate that the top-ten lineup will be somewhat like this:

BEST

ATI Radeon 4870 X2

Nvidia Geforce GTX280

Nvidia Geforce GTX260

Nvidia Geforce 9800GX2 (best current Nvidia)

ATI Radeon 4870

ATI Radeon 3870 X2 (best current ATI)

Nvidia Geforce 9800GTX

ATI Radeon 4850

ATI Radeon 3870

Nvidia Geforce 9600GT

It is debatable which of the 4870 X2 and the GTX280 will come top, however. Certainly, the cost of producing a GTX280 will be much higher and therefore it will cost more even if it doesn't have the best performance.

Also, buying an Nvidia card means you may not be able to fully enjoy all games because it doesn't support DirectX 10.1 and games like Assasin's Creed gain almost 30% in framerates when using DX10.1

I have a 3850 right now and it's pretty good. $250 for the 4850 sounds pretty nice, especially once prices drop as well...but the benefits of the 4870 sound too good to pass up as well.  I've got a Crossfire board and I might want 2 cards in the future.

Why no 10.1 for Nvidia cards?

Can't wait for the benchmarks.
From the pricing of the new Geforce GTX cards, it looks like they're going to have killer performance considering you can get a 9800GTX for around 250 now.

With the extra bandwidth of the 4870/Gt2xx series it's going to be awesome to see how much AA you can enable at high resolutions.

The interesting test IMO will be between the 4850/4870 and the GTX:260 as they are pretty close in price.

I'm seriously wanting a 4870x2 by now, I think it'll be a monster! And the introduction price is very low compared to the 1900 series in the day!

since I'm waiting for Intel's next gen processors--hyper-threading equals win--the G100's might be out by then.

I'll have to stay with nvidia until ATI's linux drivers are better. (sadly though, nvidia's linux drivers still yield very poor performance with the 8 series, compared to windows)

edit:  It still seems kinda odd to see an avid linux user who is also an avid ATI fan

 Because nVidia probably considersthat the G100 should be the debut 10.1 cards and not a revision like the G260 and 280.

I need a new video card, I have a 7800 GTX atm. How good of an upgrade will the 4850 be?

The thing is immediatly when the new cards come out it tkes awhile for any one game to use it properly and that takes about a year to and then its cheaper but then new ones come out.