Do not wait for the HD7000. You can wait till end of days thinking like that.
That's a bad argument. If new GPU's came out every week, would you upgrade every week? No. You need to set some performance criteria for making a positive decision to buy now, or wait until those performance criteria improve, to buy later.
My criteria are these:
1./ Don't even consider upgrading unless you are gaining an order of magnitude improvement, like 2x or higher.
2./ Or if heat, noise, or power consumption is an issue, then accept a lower performance upgrade but with significant gains in heat, noise, power
3./ Budget
4./ "need"
Now, let's look at this scenario. AltecV1 is an enthusiast, but he is in Estonia. It is not a wealthy country. People in Estonia are not big earners. RELATIVELY SPEAKING, PC equipment costs a larger slice of your income. And the alternative opportunities are much greater. Food, drink, parties, travel, etc. are a fraction of what they are in the UK/US and so therefore there IS PAIN in the cost of upgrading compared with that else you can do with the money.
Now let's look at "need". We don't exactly know what AltecV1 is doing with his GPU. Is he folding, is he gaming, is he encoding? If gaming, then we need to look at his TFT resolution which is a standard resolution, and nothing demanding. So unless he is spending a significant portion of his time gaming the really latest games I think he may be well covered by the 4850.
But if AltecV1 wants a better TFT and a GPU to drive higher resolutions fluidly, then I would say the 6850 doesnt cut the mustard. There is afterall a big difference between 6950 and 6850. The 6950 is a worthwhile upgrade IMO, but the 6850 isnt. It doesnt take AltecV1 to the next step.
The same can be said about performance/watt and therefore overall heat, power consumption and noise.
It is always very tempting to "buy a bargain", but I really don't think a 6850 is worth it for AltecV1. Wait and get a 6950 at the same price once 7x is released, or indeed save and get a 7x when it is out in the summer.
If AltecV1 has EUR 130 burning in his pocket, then I think he should put that EUR 130 into a SSD. He'd get a lot more benefit/fun out of the investment. Alternatively, trade that Core2Duo for a Quad. Of course, it depends on what you are
doing with your PC.