Conclusion:
Asus has taken a stock GeForce GTX 260 and with their overclocked, TOP edition it now comes out ahead of of a standard Radeon 4870 thanks to some fancy overclocking. This shows that Nvidia is a forced to be reckoned with and it wouldn't take much for them to re-gain the lead. That said down the line we should also start to see overclocked versions of ATI cards which could put it back on top, it is really that close with these cards. Ultimately it comes down to personal choice, the Nvidia card runs cooler but the ATI card has support for DirectX 10.1 and better H.264 decoding support. Either card you can't go wrong with.

Pricing:
The Asus GeForce ENGTX260 TOP can be had for an excellent $269 after rebate here. This put it in line with other Radeon 4870 cards so it does make it a good deal. You can get a Radeon HD for about $20 less though so it is also something to consider.

Score: 98%