Thursday, January 29th 2015
AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price
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.
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.
181 Comments on AMD Cashes in On GTX 970 Drama, Cuts R9 290X Price
There are 6 Nvidia's ahead of any AMD and the sole AMD card with more than 10 reviews and getting 5 eggs is a 8GB Sapphire that costs >$400. If I wanted to kill a few hours I could calculate the mean and median rating for all the cards, but at a glance I can see that Nvidia would win.
If you want to go to the bottom of the Maxwell line, the GTX 750 vs the R7 260x, it's even more dramatic. www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709 600487564 600473874&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Pagesize=90&Page=1
If you can find a case where AMD would beat the competing Nvidia card in Newegg reviews, I'd be interested. It isn't tough to calculate and I already gave the numbers. If you pay a normal US price for electricity (~11 cents/kw-hr) it's $1/W/yr continuous. A 290x uses 8W more at idle and way more than that at other times. For my typical use (computer on 24/7 but heavy card use only a couple hours per day), it would probably amount to around $20-30/yr. Is that a weird case and is that amount of money trivial? Not to me.
When you say "water proof" it means that it is resistant and protected. The same with AMD cards - they are protected and resistant to idiots. :D
And WTF is this 24\7 BS, as if your gaming 24\7 you got other issue's which are much more important. So math is flawed right from the get go.
Yes vsync makes a hell of a difference @60Hz which most are on still and is typically best for gaming typically.
- Radeon HD 7850 : 2,69%
- Radeon HD 7870 : 12,45%
- Radeon HD 7950 : 5,32%
- Radeon HD 7970 : 7,24%
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti : 1,43%
- GeForce GTX 660 Ti : 3,06%
- GeForce GTX 670 : 3,42%
- GeForce GTX 680 : 2,66%
- Radeon HD 7850 : 3,74%
- Radeon HD 7870 : 5,48%
- Radeon HD 7870 XT : 4,25%
- Radeon HD 7950 : 5,75%
- Radeon HD 7970 : 5,31%
- GeForce GTX 660 : 1,01%
- GeForce GTX 660 Ti : 2,81%
- GeForce GTX 670 : 2,87%
- GeForce GTX 680 : 1,99%
The Pudget Systems results were very unfavorable to AMD for initial reliability, but that was a small sample size. I don't know if it is heavy, but not super light either. There is +8W in idle. The 290x uses 67W more just running a bluray, and ~100W more in typical gaming. If I gamed for 2hr/day and watched 2hr/day of video that would be an average of 14W, or 22W total adding the idle consumption, or $22/yr. Maybe $50 in two years is a bit much but it isn't that crazy either.
It's laughable that AMD tries to cash in on this fuss. GTX 970 still has 4 GB of memory and is still a superior choice to R9 290X. Spreading misinformation about this controversy is quite immoral.
there is not misinformation going around.. it is a peace of shit that people have been complaining about since it was launched and nvidia ignored them so they where thinking it is just drivers and sli performance will improve haha
All the games i play run 180w-240w total system power usage and runs 80w idle. With vsync off you are some what correct in what your saying.
Our electric bill has not gone up either since i got my 290X clocked at 1050 over the last year i have had it in fact the 290X is taking the same power usage as my 6970 was but with higher details in games.
Look at it this way. You don't buy a passport from your government, you apply for it, you pay the required fees, and then they give you a passport TO HOLD. Your government still OWNS your passport. Same with credit cards. Your bank OWNS your credit card. When you buy games on Steam, or buy a physical copy, and you have it installed, you're HOLDING the software, along with a LICENSE to use it. You don't own the game, even if it came in a $200 collector's edition set with a gold disc, sitting on a satin pillow, in an expensive wood box.
That's why you can't compare Steam purchases with graphics card purchases. It's a tangible commodity that isn't subject to any EULA. You buy it, and then you can use it to play games, watch videos, create CGI, or use as paperweight (like W1zzard does).