The performance of the card is really good at this price point, and sits in the lower mid-range very well. In all our testing, the HIS Radeon 6850 1GB either matched or beat our comparison card, a card that AMD would like you to compare to their 6870; I think they are being a little conservative here, or perhaps that's the point. The 6850 will perform better than or at least the same as a more expensive GTX 460 1GB.