PC gamers are often thought of as being elitist by the console gaming crew. This in no small way a byproduct of the traditionally high barrier to entry of performance PC gaming. High-end PC hardware is a notoriously expensive market, where the latest graphics cards often exceed price of a current-gen console and the latest processors can run for twice that. Nvidia’s latest and greatest offering, the GTX 280, runs for around $600 dollars on its own. Even when paired with a midrange processor and motherboard, the total cost of a gaming PC can easily exceed $1400. By contrast, one could buy a PS3, a standard Xbox 360, and a Wii for a grand total of $900. The cutting edge, it seems, has always come with a steep price tag.

Enter the new Radeon HD 4800 series cards from AMD/ATi. With a current roster of just two models priced at or below $300, these new cards pack a high-end punch at midrange prices, and are turning the world of high end graphics processing on its head. With frugal shopping, I was able to construct a theoretical build with a 4850 on Newegg.com that should be able to run Crytek’s system killer Crysis smoothly on high settings for a mere $700, a significant departure from the near $2k gaming behemoths that would have been needed at the game’s release.

The design philosophy of the new RV700 architecture which powers the ATi’s latest offering takes the focus off of speed and puts the spotlight back where it really belongs: efficiency. Nvidia has taken the approach of upping clock speeds and die sizes on their latest cards, which are now so big that to be able to contain them is now a valid bullet point for case manufacturers’ feature lists. Designers of AMD/ATi’s latest cards were given a target die size and retail cost. But were they successful? Lets just say that Nvidia’s stock prices aren’t plunging on their own.

The Radeon HD 4850 is $200 and is currently the bang-for-buck king. It’s a new high-end chip that carries a price tag one wouldn’t expect to see on something with this kind of power until at least mid 2009. Benchmarks put it unsettlingly close to the GTX 260 from Nvidia, which cost about twice as much. Think about it: for the cost of one GTX 260, you could buy two 4850’s and run them in tandem using ATi’s Crossfire platform. Now not only have you completely demolished the performance of the GTX 260 you could have bought for the same amount, but are also exceeding the throughput of the GTX 280, which would cost all of $200 more.

The Radeon HD 4870 costs $300. While still a stellar offer, many may dissuaded to spend the extra money on this model when the 4850 maintains such an attractive price-performance ratio. Early Benchmarks show the 4870 further closing the gap between the new ATi cards and the GTX 260, and even exceeding it in certain conditions. The main attraction here is GDDR5 video RAM, which has never yet been put to use in a consumer video card. Whether or not the new memory standard will pay off towards the card’s longevity is unknown, but the technology itself is sound and promising, and should be a treat for willing early adapters.

The Radeon HD 4800 series represents a reimagining of the performance graphics market’s entire design ideology. Don’t let the lower clock speeds fool you- these little cards pack a punch (and will actually fit in your case!). If you’re in the market for a new PC or just looking to up your graphics capabilities, there’s no excuse for passing up well-priced wonders while they’re still fresh.