Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT went out of stock more or less everywhere within days of its launch, and it's now nearly impossible to find either in stock or near its intended $199-249 price bracket. Luckily for folks planning to upgrade this holiday season, AMD's newly launched Radeon HD 3850 and Radeon HD 3870 graphics cards may face. According to The Inquirer, AMD plans to ship around 500,000 units of Radeon HD 3850 and 3870 by the year's end, with the accent on single-slot 3850. According to orders, there should also be a substantial number of 3850s combined with 512MB of memory.

That would be an order of magnitude higher than the number of Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT cards that were available at launcharound 40,000-50,000, The Inquirer quotes unnamed Nvidia partners as saying. Considering the Radeon HD 3870's very acceptable performance and very enticing $219 launch price tag, it's not hard to imagine buyers being swayed in AMD's direction when faced with out-of-stock GeForce 8800 GTs priced at $270 or more.

I  rounded up a few reviews of the ATi Radeon HD 3800 series as possible for your reading pleasure: Chile Hardware, HardOCP, Hardware Canucks, HotHardware, Legit Reviews, Overclockers Club, PC Perspective.

Performance Summary: The new Radeon HD 3870 performed much like a Radeon HD 2900 XT. The two cards generally traded victories over each other depending on the game and resolution being tested. Due to its smaller frame buffer and lower clock speeds, the Radeon HD 3850's performance was somewhat lower, but in comparison to what are expected to be similarly priced mid-range cards like the Radeon 2600 XT and GeForce 8600 GTS, the Radeon HD 3850's performance is quite strong. NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTS, GT, and of course GTX usually performed better than the new Radeons, however.

There is a lot to like about the new Radeon HD 38x0 series. Both the Radeon HD 3870 and 3850 performed well throughout our entire battery of tests, in terms of framerates and image quality. Video playback performance was also good and thanks to design tweaks, PowerPlay, and a new 55nm manufacturing process power consumption, temperatures, and noise levels are way down in comparison to the previous generation. The RV670 GPU also offers support for DirectX 10.1, which is a first in the industry.