AMD Radeon R9 290(X) Price Drops Are Promotions From AIBs
It looks like you can now buy an AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics card for as little as $299.
You might have noticed that in a handful of places it is now possible to buy AMD Radeon graphics cards for a lot less money than last week, and that’s for good reason. Although some reports appear to claim that these are AMD’s price cuts, we didn’t hear anything from AMD directly, so we dug in.
When we asked a spokesman at AMD, we were told that the AIB (Add-in-Board) partners are running a channel promotion that enables lower starting prices for the Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X graphics cards. This brought the prices of R9 290 cards down to as little as $299, while the R9 290X would cost as little as $369, although they are typically listed for about $399.
It is important to note that these prices are “Promotional” and that they only apply “While stocks last”, but truth be told, we wouldn’t be too surprised if AMD announces an official price cut somewhere in the future.
One thing that is clear is that this is a response to the launch of Nvidia’s Maxwell-based GTX 970 and GTX 980 graphics cards. Nvidia priced the GTX 980 at $549, while the GTX 970 is priced at a very competitive $329. Considering that the GTX 970 was trading blows with the R9 290X, a price cut for the AMD cards was destined to come.
At prices ranging from $369 to about $399, the R9 290X might still not even entirely make sense against the GTX 970, but at $299 the Radeon R9 290 certainly packs a lot of value. Additionally, AMD’s cards still come with the Never Settle bundles, giving you up to three free games along with your GPU purchase.
‘Tis an exciting time in the consumer GPU space.
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looks like NVidia turn to drive until amd answers witch I like cause it keeps rolling in the new better tec in cards and that's good for all of us
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161459&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
While the GTX 970 is $329.99 at cheapest with Amazon Prime.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NI647NE/?tag=pcpapi-20
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-16.html
Going by this review, the GTX 970 is 5% faster than the R9 290, while costing 22% more. In terms of price/performance ratio, the AMD R9 290 is still a better deal. Granted it uses a lot more power and creates a lot more heat, but its not that bad.
I love AMD's GCN architecture and you get a lot for what you pay, but it really is time for this GCN to be retired, at least in the high end, and for a new architecture to take its place that is more power efficient.
It'll be interesting to see what AMD's response to Maxwell is, now that Maxwell is in full force.
I'd buy a 290 for may be $180 BNiB just because around $200 is my limit for gambling money away senselessly trolololol
I'd buy a 290 for may be $180 BNiB just because around $200 is my limit for gambling money away senselessly trolololol
That is just bias. R9 290 GPUs with aftermarket coolers don't have an issue with thermals and don't throttle, overclocking them does the same on anything and increases in performance. Not to mention regardless of how much thermal throttling occurs in a system, it wouldn't cause a BSoD.
Its fine to see more value in the GTX 970 because its a newer architecture, it uses less power, it will almost always (if not always) run quieter and cooler, and since it has more overclocking headroom it will always out perform an R9 290. However you shouldn't completely discredit the R9 290 as a high end gaming solution, post inaccurate bias that causes less knowledgeable people to mistake your bias for truth, or completely disregard price/performance ratio. Again, the GTX 970 does have a lot of features that give it more value above simple FPS performance, and honestly if I had to buy a GPU right now its what I would buy, but someone who will want just the all around best performance for their money and not care about power or heat is going to want to buy the R9 290 and not the GTX 970.
And you need to look up the meaning of the word bias, and compare that definition to matters of fact. I draw these conclusions based on first hand observations. You base yours on what?
Look at the Newegg reviews of the 780 or 780ti in general. Compare it to the 290/x . Don't just look at the eggs, actually read what the issues are. For the GK110 it's mostly HSF issues related to the board partners.
Look at the 290/x's and appreciate the massive level of consistency of defect across a multitude of AIBs.
Who's being bias
And you need to look up the meaning of the word bias, and compare that definition to matters of fact. I draw these conclusions based on first hand observations. You base yours on what?
Look at the Newegg reviews of the 780 or 780ti in general. Compare it to the 290/x . Don't just look at the eggs, actually read what the issues are. For the GK110 it's mostly HSF issues related to the board partners.
Look at the 290/x's and appreciate the massive level of consistency of defect across a multitude of AIBs.
Who's being bias
I looked at Newegg, for Gigabyte and Powercolor, neither of which are very good companies to buy GPUs from, had several people with issues higher than average. Anything from any other company is pretty much either DOA and had very very few problems in addition to DOA.
For Nvidia, I looked at 770, 780, and 780Ti. While the 770 and 780 had little issue, the 780Ti has a lot of negative feedback too. Does that make the 780Ti a bad card? No, cause the cards that are reviewed really low are Powercolor and Gigabyte again with pretty much the same coolers than the R9 290(x) cards have with negative reviews. Anything from AMD from Sapphire, MSI, Asus, HIS, etc. have all 4 or 5 eggs with no problems outside of occasional DOAs, which happens to everyone occasionally.
For looking up bias if its really necessary:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
Definition 3, B
"an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice"
You have a personal, and unreasoned judgment that the AMD Hawaii based GPUs are garbage despite the fact for the vast majority of people who own one bought from a better company than Powercolor and Gigabyte have had no problems and find the card works perfectly for them.
I looked at Newegg, for Gigabyte and Powercolor, neither of which are very good companies to buy GPUs from, had several people with issues higher than average. Anything from any other company is pretty much either DOA and had very very few problems in addition to DOA.
For Nvidia, I looked at 770, 780, and 780Ti. While the 770 and 780 had little issue, the 780Ti has a lot of negative feedback too. Does that make the 780Ti a bad card? No, cause the cards that are reviewed really low are Powercolor and Gigabyte again with pretty much the same coolers than the R9 290(x) cards have with negative reviews. Anything from AMD from Sapphire, MSI, Asus, HIS, etc. have all 4 or 5 eggs with no problems outside of occasional DOAs, which happens to everyone occasionally.
For looking up bias if its really necessary:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
Definition 3, B
"an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment : prejudice"
You have a personal, and unreasoned judgment that the AMD Hawaii based GPUs are garbage despite the fact for the vast majority of people who own one bought from a better company than Powercolor and Gigabyte have had no problems and find the card works perfectly for them.
K, after this post I'm just going to agree to disagree because my opinion on the subject is not changing regardless of your imagination that the 290 and 290x have a defect-ratio that is within reasonable levels. That said, the following is copy/pasted from newegg.com unedited:
SAPPHIRE TRI-X OC 100361-2SR Radeon R9 290X :
1.Cons: This card did not work for more than 2 weeks.
2.Cons: Card failed just under two months. Seems everyone is having this failure. You have been warned.
3.Cons: Black Screens galore, worked ok for about 2 weeks, then started to get black screens, now just a bunch of black screens, stay away from this thing until AMD figures out how to write a graphics driver.
4.Cons: The two eggs off in NO WAY reflect on Sapphire or New Egg who have both been superb in their quality of service but rather in AMD who have been horrible.
This is my 4th physical R9 290X card and my second Sapphire one. the first 3 where ALL bad. The last one finally worked. As I tried to troubleshoot the other 3 cards I discovered thousands of people were having the same black screen issues.
5.Pros: ** NOTHING.
Please google search R9 290x before you buy this card.
BLACK SCREEN which will not post to BIOS is a common problem
Cons: This card will not post even to bios. I've spent 8 hours trying to make this work.
1. Different PSU's will not work, including a 1050w PSU, 850w PSU and a 750w PSU.
2. This card does not work in other systems, even with lower PCIE 2.0
3. This card does not work in PCIE3.0
4. Does not work with Maximus hero 7.
5. This card sucks.
I guess Sapphire is not so good either.
ASUS R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 Radeon R9 290X 4GB :
1.Cons: - Can get pretty hot
- Seem to have QA issues with cards being DOA or die within a few weeks
2.Cons: When I initially bought this card to replace my 7950, I kept having issues with black screen/video drivers crashing. I put my 7950 back in and had no issues, and RMA'd it off to Asus. Asus's RMA didn't take too long, but when I got the card back it was now causing BSOD, in the 2 weeks it was away my 7950 never caused me any of these issues. Before and after I RMA'd the card, I read up on the web I saw a bunch of 290x/290 users all having the same issues with various solutions(There's a 127 page thread on overclockers about the black screen issue), but honestly you shouldn't be having this many issues with a graphics card, it should just work. Extremely disappointed, I went from 6970->7950->290x, but I'm going to break my AMD streak and probably go with Nvidia for my next card.
3.Cons: Almost instantly of being under video heavy strain it turns into an oven. It reached temperatures of ~120-130 degrees Fahrenheit on a very well ventilated box.
4.Cons: Gone through two cards and they're both bad. Stock is OC'd and it's not stable at all. Frequent crashes from too much heat.
5.Cons: Upon arrival, it would crash and BSOD immediately when in crossfire with bezel correction enabled. It took ASUS about a week to determine that it was defective, I returned it and it took another month for them to determine that the replacement was also defective.
6.Cons: Card Failure
7.Cons: I purchased two of these on 3/13/2014 from newegg. They are now both dead. There is no cooling provided to the VRAM chips on the boards. I religiously monitored temps under load - GPU and VRM temps never exceeded 85C. Cards were never overclocked. First card failed at 29 days - dead short. Second card is now artifacting and has wide pink vertical stripe in output (4/25 - prompted this review). Thermal paste was completely dry and GPU cooler did not have full contact with GPU. As an engineer, I believe that this card/cooler design is flawed. I have two reference Sapphire R9 290s with aftermarket Accelero Hybrid coolers that outperform this design (at a higher cost). If I ever get two functional cards back for crossfire, it is my intention to liquid cool them as well as putting heat sinks on the VRAM chips. The R9 series runs too hot (85C) even with a Direct CU 2 cooler.
Et tu , Asus?
I could go on but I won't - it's taking up a lot of space and honestly it's entirely redundant. I said it before but it flew over your head the first time so I'll say it again emphatically : The defects are traversing AIB's , the problem is HAWAII
The issues with any GK110 or GK104 powered board are minuscule in comparison and more often than not they are related to manufacturing errors in the HeatSink&Fan , i.e, squeaky/wobbly fan.
970 and 980 are excellent cards. Especially the 970, which is a great bargain. However, they throttle right out of the box, and in actual games not just Furmark. That's a fact, jack. A really good aftermarket 970 with higher TDP limits (or at least the ability to raise them a lot more than Nvidia normally allows) and a beefier cooler would be a great overclocker.
Anyway whether getting a 290 or a 970, high-end aftermarket is the way to go.
A) Low Power device
B) Lower Price
C) Greater power for a extreme price/performance ratio( maybe like the power of a 980 for 299$ or 970 for 250$ or thier extreme model a r9 295x2 for 400$/ 200ws mind blown)
Amd could seriously use a new powerful/power efficent design in both the cpu and gpu department.
Go to Newegg and look in the open box and refurbished categories for video cards.
It is usually around 7- 10 to one ratio for AND vs Nvidia.
Something must be up if the returns/ refurbs are that far out of whack. I know AMD does not sell 7-10 times the cards Nvidia does.
My last build was all AMD. Got tired of the crashes and went back to Nvidia for the video card. No more crashes.
Could be me but every ATI/AMD video card I have owned over the years has had driver/crash problems.
And I have had a lot of systems over the years . My first system being a Pentium 75mhz, 16MB ram, 850MB Conner hard drive and S3Virge 2mb with 2MB socketed for total of 4Mb video ram for AutoCAD.
I no longer game much so I stick with Nvidia for Linux/Folding support.
Every one has their opinions, mine are based on hundreds of systems built over the years for myself, friends and family.
DX 12 is a NON FACTOR. MS, Nvidia and AMD , have all said that DX 12 will run natively on DX 11 hardware, and do so better and more efficiently than dx 11 does. that DX 12 will not require new video cards. so Nvidia pitching the GF 900's as DX 12 hardware is just a marketing ploy.