The war to become the leading graphics card manufacturer has led ATI to lower the price tag for its latest generation products. Although everybody is expecting the graphics manufacturer to beat NVIDIA in terms of performance with its recently rumored Radeon HD 4870 X2 card, that doesn't stop the company from lowering its price tags. This time, the HD 4850 is in the spotlight.

According the listings displayed at Geizhals.at, European users can acquire the PowerColor's HD 4850 for as low as �134,71� The card isn't yet available with this price tag, but one of the shops listed at the Geizhals.at website sells the card for �136,26, which isn't that much different and still makes the card the cheapest one around. This is obviously a standard version of AMD's HD 4850 design and is provided with a reference single slot cooler. Being meant for the wide consumer market, this price tag of the HD 4850 graphics card is rather impressive.

The lower price tag of AMD's Radeon HD 4850 graphics card should put pressure on NVIDIA's upcoming 55nm GeForce 9800GTX+, which is expected to provide users with more graphics power than the GeForce 9800GTX. But NVIDIA is also expected to lower prices for some of its GeForce9 graphics cards, especially since the price tag of the company's flagship model has fallen by a good $150.

The price war between NVIDIA and AMD can ultimately only benefit the end user, who will get to purchase better graphics cards at much more affordable price tags. The downside of this rivalry is that some users already went ahead and acquired some of these latest models at higher prices, which can�t be pleasant.