Since you can buy Radeon 4850 in most of the countries in Europe and even in Israel, someone at AMD decided to change the NDA and launch date for the 4850 cards for today - meaning now.

We've learned that if you have some Radeon 4850 scores, AMD won't mind if you post some "early numbers." However, the presentation of Radeon 4870 remains under embargo until Wednesday, the 25th. This has been confirmed by high-ranked sources inside ATI / AMD and if you don't trust us, simply call AMD and double check.

Thousands of Radeon 4850 have already been sold in retail / e-tail stores and there is no way to control this. We've learned that distributors and shops received these cards between three and one week ago and that they were just waiting for ATI's final OK.

What a mess, and most won’t be ready with their reviews; but then again, many will, at least till Monday. DAAMIT people, you should've executed this one at least a bit better.

Update: As this is one developing story we've learned that the reason for pulling the launch was at the request of big customers. A lot of people at Malaga are buying many more Radeon 4870 and 4850 cards than was originally expected.

Journalists we talked to are less than impressed, but the people who buys hundreds of thousands of these cards made the call and pulled in this launch.

At least you can now tell that customers, distributors and partners are impressed with price / performance ratio and they are buying like there is no tomorrow. It's a good card, you will see from all reviews that will start showing up today.