Price of the R9-290 went up???

The value has gone from $20 in 2012 to about $200 this past summer to the $850-1000 we have seen in the past month.

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Go ahead and laugh, crypto-currencies are the future--no government control, no arbitrary actions, everything open-sourced and encrypted and any actions taken by the coin developers has to be acceptable to the majority of the coin's owners since any modification has to be adopted by all who mine or trade the coins. They are inflation proof (in that no one can arbitrarily create more coins than the algorithm allows . . . cough, THE FED, cough.

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Making currency available by pointlessly cracking hashes totally defies logic.

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How long will certain people continue to insist the AMD is a benevolent Robin Hood trying to rob the rich (nVidia, Intel) and give to the poor (consumers)? They're a corporation. They do what all the corporations do. Every single thing. They're not any better. In fact, when someone is desperate--even a corporation--they start to do crazy, even horrible things just to try and get ahead long enough to survive.

Should I even list all the shady things AMD has done lately?

They've been nothing but shady with the R9 290 and 290X. They "reveal" it without specs. They insist you're going to be buying it on a day that comes, goes, and is gone. They tell you Battlefield 4 is coming with all cards, then backtrack and say, "We never said anything different" despite the fact they actually did say something different in about as official a way as one can imagine (head PR guy).

They throw out review cards with special firmware with cherry-picked hardware that performs far better than the regular product. They count on people not being able to get enough cards at the initial release to truly test the differences between releasing and reviewing product. They can call on benefit of the doubt and get great sales for the holiday period while everyone is in disarray with less facts than normal.

It doesn't hurt they flew all these people out to a tropical island, showed everyone a group of long-term strategy technologies that require a lot of developer support they currently don't have, and then did their bait 'n switch. I don't put it past them to have released those widespread rumors that there was a version of the 280/280X having TrueAudio.

But that's just about the R9 290/290X, really. Let's recall the last real CPU launch by AMD. "You can review the parts that are great right now if you want to be released of embargo on THOSE specific parts. Review only the things we say you can review, say only the things we let you say, and you can review the entire CPU a month later once we've decided you can. You know, right after product is shipping." Hmmm... that doesn't sound the least bit like cherry-picking what is said, does it? Naturally, TR didn't go for it, but they suffered hits on the site for it, hits that went to other apparently less credible sites that DID take those hits greedily. In exchange, AMD got initial reviews, hoping that people wouldn't go back for the update after having a positive impression of their latest product.

From a Phenom shipping with horrible errata that hobbled performance to the entire Crossfire problems both at the initial Radeon 7970 launch to this year when they could no longer deny their widespread and rampant problems with frame latency, to 4K problems, you have an AMD that ignores problems until they are caught elbow-deep in the cookie jar. They promise solutions, hint that they're coming far sooner than they are, and then release updated product to truly solve the problem. They refuse to acknowledge the problems.

There's the (so-called) "high end" FX CPU's, too. They're announced as "only for OEM's" and as high dollar CPU's, but within a month are sold everywhere and for far less, too. Hmmm... did they do that as a publicity stunt? Would you call that a lie or just marketing trickery? Seems odd either way.

And then there's the delay of Volcanic Islands. You know, the R9 290/290X and the replacement parts for the Radeon 7950/7970 aka the R9 280/280X, etc. Supposedly coming at the beginning of this year on every comment that came from their mouth last year, this year when the time came, they shrugged and said, "Wut? We never said nothin'. These aren't the droids you're looking for." Waving their hands at the entire intarwebz.

When Kaveri was to come earlier this year. "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Suddenly, Richlands makes perfect sense, coming when it did. Naturally, we all want to know what happened. "We released CPU's precisely as we intended to exactly when we intended to in exactly the way we always intended and nothing at all changes. No delays, no problems, everything is great, and we're working exactly as intended." Jedi Mind Trick again, just for good measure.

Everything they're doing speaks to a company more focused on moments of great spin rather than consistent greatness. They fire entire teams of people to hire individual names. They figure the names will make for great press releases and take away some of the bite of losing masses of people despite being cheaper in the long term. They release bundles and bundles of games, but keep the same line of cards for over two years. The games take away most of the sting, right? They want that initial great review on their APU even if the final reviews smacked down their CPU performance. They love the initial buzz of having a $400-550 card line that can beat nVidia's $500-700 series even if the final analysis shows they were sending their very best to get those initial scores. They'll even try to soothe users who are burned by lack of Battlefield 4 despite a highly quoted, widespread announcement email (right before a weekend no less!) by top level brass announcing said BF4 for everyone... by giving it away to a thousand people via a freebie campaign. This is no doubt far, far cheaper than giving the game away to all their customers instead.

People, this is AMD. A company desperate to scrounge up a profit. This is the company Rory Reed is making. They're counting on loyalty, on doubt, on obfuscation, and more than a little La-la-la'ing by people who either remember bygone days or just don't expect this kind of deceit on a regular basis to be real and not "overblown."

It's not that this "kind of" thing hasn't been done by other corporations before. This "kind of" thing has happened before and every time we see it, reviewers go berserk. They should. It's what they should do. I suppose that's why AMD helped a lot of reviewers feel better about them--to give them more leeway during the last few months--with their little tropical island giveaway. They also bought Anandtech, lock, stock, and barrel. Effectively, if not literally. It helps to have Anandtech avoiding most scandals with a good long delay before acknowledging or responding to said controversies. They ignored the frame latency problem and even denied it for a while. Then they ignored the 4K problem for a while, too. They also took part in the APU review of selective parts with glee. I suppose that's when they showed up on AMD's radar as receptive to "special advertising."

The problem isn't that other companies haven't tried to do things like this. It's that there's a reason they don't get away with it. There's a reason that we get annoyed by it. It doesn't matter if it's nVidia or Intel, we should and have gotten annoyed, angry, and railed against it.

AMD themselves have done it before in the past. Things "like this." The problem here is they've done so much in just the recent past. One thing after another, layered, it gets to be so much that it's hard to even make a short list of all they've done, it's so much.

TLDR; don't trust AMD. They're desperate and they're doing anything at all to make an impact, even if that's going to wreck their reputation in the long term. Everything they've done suggests they don't see a long term. I guess that's why 95 degrees all the time makes sense to them.

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Maybe because they use tactics that deliberately screw over customers?

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