Radeon HD 4850 early pics

OCWorkBench has hosted an early photo of RV770's Radeon HD 4850, which seems like a single-slot graphics card solution. It is said to sport 512 MB GDDR3 memory, with a price around $180-$200. June 18 is currently the set date for HD 4850 hard launch, so expect gamers to have their hands on this card on the same day it launches.

This could be a great start for gamers expecting to play Far Cry 2, maybe? And I just found out that NVIDIA will be launching GTX 280 and GTX 260 on June 17. Now, I'm not the owner of 9800 GTX, but somehow I do feel slightly ripped apart thinking that maybe 9800 GTX is just a stop-gap solution. This is only my opinion, but 9800 GTX didn't enjoy a long reign of power as long as 8800 GTX before it got replaced. If GTX 280 and 260, which use entirely new architecture (not G92 derivatives) perform better (which they should!), then I guess I'll be reading the same pages of riots in the tech community forums.

Visa and MasterCard are going to be very busy this mid summer...