Thursday, January 29th 2015

AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

Jan 29th, 2015 10:40 Discuss (181 Comments)

AMD decided to cash-in on the GeForce GTX 970 memory controversy, with a bold move and a cheap (albeit accurate) shot. The company is making its add-in board (AIB) partners lower pricing of its Radeon R9 290X graphics card, which offers comparable levels of performance to the GTX 970, down to as low as US $299.

And then there's a gentle reminder from AMD to graphics card buyers with $300-ish in their pockets. With AMD, "4 GB means 4 GB." AMD also emphasizes that the R9 290 and R9 290X can fill their 4 GB video memory to the last bit, and feature a 512-bit wide memory interface, which churns up 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth at reference clocks, something the GTX 970 can't achieve, even with its fancy texture compression mojo.

Add your own comment

181 Comments on AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

#51

GreiverBlade

krimetalHow many people buy reference cards anyway?

i do ... because a Aquacomputer Kryographics Hawaii + backplate on a 2nd hand ref 290 @ 190$ is even a bit cheaper than some of the custom design (and looks better)

well ... i love both brand but the 970 "drama" is still real ... even if it doesn't impact the real performance, they still did try to hide it, that fact only is enough for me. (not that any other brand doesn't "cheat" but still :roll: )
waiting to see some 2nd hand 290/290X price down where i am ... if it reach my country before the 380x or something else from Nv (i think my 290 will sit on my shelf by that time .... i can not resolve myself to sell the best card i ever had :roll: all category include : bang for buck, check )

#52

Casecutter

64KThat's a steal but I don't know anything about Powercolor. Are they a good quality brand that backs up their warranty well?

I've had various PowerColor (~5) other 4-5years and not one complaint. Always get my rebates, the 280 I got beginning of Dec came in like 3 weeks. Did have an old 6790 that had a noisy fan contacted service and they just sent a fan no questions asked.

Robust construction, many with backing plates, as above you need good air movement or you can tell the fans will ramp up, add changed fans and it's quiet.

It might be too early for pricing to move out for the 380X, but what they heck as good as any to start...
While AMD should not be that blatant on the 4Gb is 4Gb, more just say full memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s utilization, on 512-Bit.

#53

rruff

FluffmeisterAMD know that cheap[er] GTX 970's hitting the market ain't going to do them any favours, in fact it's the last thing they need.

Nah! The 970s are now tainted, so they lower the price a little on the 290 and 290x to get more people to jump from Nvidia to AMD.

The work has already been done on these cards. Marginal costs are low. What AMD needs is market share, and this is a smart move for them. If/when Nvidia cuts the price of 970s they can follow them down, and then the 380x will be released which will hopefully blow away the 980, and they can sell that one for a premium.

#54

Fluffmeister

rruffNah! The 970s are now tainted, so they lower the price a little on the 290 and 290x to get more people to jump from Nvidia to AMD.

The work has already been done on these cards. Marginal costs are low. What AMD needs is market share, and this is a smart move for them. If/when Nvidia cuts the price of 970s they can follow them down, and then the 380x will be released which will hopefully blow away the 980, and they can sell that one for a premium.

I hope your right, I really do, losing market share and money like AMD have been doing can't be fun for the red team.

Besides I'm up for a second cheap and "tainted" 970, keep me posted on any great deals you see, if what you say is true they won't sell out quickly anyway.

#55

damric

Damn these 290x are tempting at that price, but I would need a heftier PSU I think than just my 550W Capstone.

#56

Sasqui

krimetalHow many people buy reference cards anyway?

I made that mistake once. That's the one underwater.

Really though, the card would throttle with the fan on full blast! (running FurMark mind you)

#57

Toothless

Tech, Games, and TPU!

I'm still wanting two 970's for triple 1080p. Though at this point I might have to go AMD..

#58

hyp36rmax

damricDamn these 290x are tempting at that price, but I would need a heftier PSU I think than just my 550W Capstone.

You'll be fine as long as you don't go crazy with the voltage.

#59

HumanSmoke

krimetalHow many people buy reference cards anyway?

And yet, in the highest demand phase of the high-end products life cycle, the launch period, AMD allows ONLY reference designs.
That's management gold right there!

#60

rruff

damricDamn these 290x are tempting at that price, but I would need a heftier PSU I think than just my 550W Capstone.

hyp36rmaxYou'll be fine as long as you don't go crazy with the voltage.

I agree... it's a decent PSU and will likely have no problem unless the rest of your system is a power hog.

#61

GreiverBlade

damricDamn these 290x are tempting at that price, but I would need a heftier PSU I think than just my 550W Capstone.

hyp36rmaxYou'll be fine as long as you don't go crazy with the voltage.

rruffI agree... it's a decent PSU and will likely have no problem unless the rest of your system is a power hog.

agreed too, this is my calculation on my mainrig (including the OC on the CPU but not the GPU)
extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine proved to be pretty reliable most of the time for me

Minimum PSU Wattage:478 W
Recommended
PSU Wattage:*

i have a 650w bronze Integra R2 (a good cheap PSU which rate almost like a silver cert) and i OC my 290 @ a 290X stock level (with some run for benchies @ 1150/1500) without any hiccups

edit: the total wattage is including 5x 120mm led fan, 1x 140mm led fan, 1x 60mm RAM fan, 2x Phobya DC12-220, 1x Led stripe 30cm 12v, 1 SSD and 2 7.2Krpm SIII HDD

#62

Tonduluboy

In my country MSI gaming R9 290x already been selling at USD$310 for months.

$1 = RM3.6 today!

#63

RealNeil

Cybrnook2002Nice to throw in a punch every now and then :)

Excited for the 380X already.....

Agreed,.......Smart move on their part to press any advantage they can.
380X is interesting to me too.

#64

AsRock

TPU addict

ZakinI think this is more so, AMD knew they had to price drop these half a year ago, and this was just a decent time to do it. Otherwise they've been overpriced for quite some time, enjoy your GPUs that AMD enjoys touting 94 celsius running as a feature.

94c yeah when they used to sell them with stock coolers and they could be fixed them with some know how.

ZakinI would sure hope under water it would be that cool...although I'm surprised I don't recall the XFX doing that decently, still a bit on the high side though. I ditched AMD after two straight generations of dealing with 2-3 months post launch games with no fixes/optimizations, let alone the older games they never would fix. I still have to deal with them on my brother's build unfortunately, typically every other month or so, they've definitely gotten better at least. Still not sure the appeal on the super inefficient chips in the R9 200s though, I'm not a big fan of throwing money at an unfinished engineering project.

Mines doing perfectly fine, if there was a issue it would of been due to one of the VRM's but with good case air flow which you should have in the 1st place there is not real issue.

#65

GreiverBlade

AsRock94c yeah when they used to sell them with stock coolers and they could be fixed them with some know how.
Mines doing perfectly fine, if there was a issue it would of been due to one of the VRM's but with good case air flow which you should have in the 1st place there is not real issue.

so do mine ... 47° gpu 41° VRM when gaming ... (when i used it on stock ref well i had to put the fan at 65% permanent xD i reckon the temp were more 75° and 77° back then ) water is a must for a ref sample (the custom design were too expensive for me at the time :) )

#66

Rowsol

I laughed when I saw the picture. Stay classy, AMD.

#67

Caring1

Parn6.2 billion transistors over 5.2 billion. That's about 20% less yield per wafer (this doesn't even take chip defects into accounts). Coupled with the 512bit bus, the card is quite a bit more expensive than 980.

How do you figure that out?
Using tried and tested technology for die size actually keeps the costs lower, the GM chip is newer tech and costly to implement, therefore more bad chips are likely during start up and higher costs.

#68

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

Mentathey said no because they have no recall order

That doesn't mean you can't return a product what doesn't work as advertised. Take them to consumer court, get back not just your money but also legal fees incurred.

#69

GhostRyder

This made me laugh as to how up front they were with the wording. Nice to see the price drop a little more though I have seen some for that price already (Heck lower in some cases) and its going to make some people think harder now I guess.

#70

RichF

NightOfChristThere is no price cut here in Japan either. My girlfriend wants to buy one for The Sims 4 and Final Fantasy. Perhaps after a few days?

Tell her to stick with the Sims 3. Sims 4 stinks.

#71

xfia

my sister loves the sims 4.. I think a lot girls do

#72

RichF

xfiamy sister loves the sims 4.. I think a lot girls do

OK, but it's a worse game. It doesn't have the open world the Sims 3 has and it was radically stripped of content in order to sell more DLCs. It doesn't even have toddlers or pools.

EA didn't even bother to make a 64-bit binary which shows just how little effort the company thinks it needs to put into a game it expects to extract hundreds of dollars per person with. (Prior versions could run into memory limitations with enough 3rd-party content in conjunction with the tons of expansions, content needed to make the game more interesting.)

#73

Pumper

RejZoRHate it when price drops never reach Europe. Still selling them for 400+ EUR...

Well, in Lithuania at least, the Gigabyte 970s are ~€400 (used to be ~350 before the damn euro plummeted against the almighty dollar) while Gigabyte 290Xs already were at €350-370.

#74

NC37

Who cares? DX12 is coming. Within not too long, all these cards will be worthless in value as everyone will shift to 12. Even if games don't support it yet, the desire to get on board with a new standard will be enough. Specially with M$ finally getting off their butt thanks to AMD Mantle showing them their butt.

#75

xfia

Microsoft has made DX12 widely compatible with older AMD and Nvidia gpu's. there may be a few features not supported but everything that is most important will be anyway.
they have always worked with hardware companies in development to ensure compatibility.. its just smart business.
hell if game developers would have embraced new DX api's we could have been on DX14 by now.
I'm sure they felt a little slapped in the face when DX11 was released and game developers continued using DX9.

Add your own comment

AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

181 Comments on AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

Latest GPU Drivers

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts

AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

Related News

181 Comments on AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price

Latest GPU Drivers

New Forum Posts

Popular Reviews

Controversial News Posts