Custom Design Radeon R9 290 to Launch Ahead of Custom Design R9 290X

[btarunr]

AMD missed its late-November window for giving its partners enough Radeon R9 290 series chips to roll out their custom-design boards in time for Christmas (the winter shopping season). It turns out that custom-design R9 290 and R9 290X cards could launch perilously close to Christmas, or miss it altogether, and launch next year. Custom design R9 290 series cards are highly anticipated as the press didn't receive the reference-design cooling solution of the two cards as well as it did the chips themselves. Reference design coolers, reviews revealed, are not only noisy, but also don't cool the GPUs well enough to prevent throttling under gaming loads.

Barring the recent reveal of MSI's Radeon R9 290X Lightning PCB, we've not come across a single custom-design R9 290 series card. Sources told ComputerBase.de that custom-design R9 290 (non-X) cards could launch first, in the mid/late-December thru January time-frame, and R9 290X could follow "later." One AIB partner which did not want to be named, attributed it to under-supply of the "Hawaii" silicon, and not any design defects that AMD is working to correct. The Radeon R9 290 (reference) is priced at $399.99, and the R9 290X for $549.99.



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[sulfur]

Och come on AMD/Manufacturers
I wanted to see DCU2 290 or TwinFrozr 290 before christmas ;( Now i don't have any idea for gift for my self ;p
300w+ TDP and referencial cooling? Suicide.

 

[kn00tcn]

Och come on AMD/Manufacturers
I wanted to see DCU2 290 or TwinFrozr 290 before christmas ;( Now i don't have any idea for gift for my self ;p
300w+ TDP and referencial cooling? Suicide.

the way i see it is if the product just launched, it wont or barely will have a nice sale on xmas, so what's the difference if i get it now or in january

but if you have free time due to holidays or vacations then ya, you end up missing out on what you were planning to do

 

[alwayssts]

I thought it was around the second week of December or so (and had been said since around the launch of 290)? This does not seem that far off...typical amd 'week or two' delay. You may have noticed that they both like to announce things early and with the most optimistic dates (for all their products...for years). The typical month give-or-take change is not uncommon from them, even up to the last minute.

Bummer it misses the holidays, but when the time since launch and the price versus competition (of reference cards) is considered, it's not terrible.

No surprise 290 will come first, for obvious reasons.

While I am sure some will attribute this to bad yields, this, that, or the other thing...I would be willing to bet that the reference design has probably just been selling that darn well. It's an odd thing to see a 400+mm chip (with realistic performance benefits scaling in price from their lower-end brethren) set at what had sadly become the price-range of smaller chips with realistically 2-4x yield. I imagine they knew they had a hit before the last-minute spec change (to go against 780), but I imagine that magnified it to a certain extent.

Frankly, I don't feel bad that AMD is probably making that extra few dollars (selling a complete card versus a chip) for a few more days. They probably need it.

That said, can't wait to see those custom cards (like everyone else). It should be interesting to see 290's set against 780s in the real (overclocked) world (where they will almost certainly be very, very similar), and to a lesser extent 290x's versus 780ti, which should be interesting from a price (if not performance) perspective depending on how high and at what expense aib partners can get the core and more importantly memory controller to run stable.

 

[THE_EGG]

God damn the 290 DC2 had better come out by end of December at the latest. PLEEEEEEAAAASEEEEE I'm planning on getting one over in the states when I'm on vacation to save some moneys.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

I think AMD would have been better off releasing this card exclusively with custom versions with custom coolers than the reference boards with reference coolers they went with, given the givens.

 

[Slomo4shO]

Blaming supply of the chips? Really? As if the chips differ from the reference models. You would think that after the initial reviews, production should have shifted to non-reference designs and the chips should have been used in non-reference models. Unless, of course, AMD strictly limited the chips to reference design models.

 

[WhoDecidedThat]

I want to ask all these OEMs. Who in his/her right mind would pay 33% more for a mere 5% extra performance??

I am assuming a well designed 290/290X with a custom PCB, custom cooler, and a properly-thought-out fan profile will add another 50$ to cost.

 

[Totally]

I want to ask all these OEMs. Who in his/her right mind would pay 33% more for a mere 5% extra performance??

I am assuming a well designed 290/290X with a custom PCB, custom cooler, and a properly-thought-out fan profile will add another 50$ to cost.

Uh, $50 is 16.7% and 9% added cost to the 290 and 290X respectively. Where did you get 33%?

 

[The Von Matrices]

Blaming supply of the chips? Really? As if the chips differ from the reference models. You would think that after the initial reviews, production should have shifted to non-reference designs and the chips should have been used in non-reference models. Unless, of course, AMD strictly limited the chips to reference design models.

You make it seem like there's a glut of reference design cards collecting dust on store shelves because people are waiting for non-reference designs. If you can show me a 290 or 290X that's in stock at a U.S. store, then I'll be very surprised. There's no doubt about a shortage of chips. Otherwise, you would see at least one variant of the card (reference or non-reference) in stock.

The 280X is out of stock this week because of the rapid price increase of Litecoin. I don't know if that's spilled over to the much less economically priced 290 series or if there's not even enough Hawaii chips to satisfy the gaming market's demand.

 

[Slomo4shO]

You make it seem like there's a glut of reference design cards collecting dust on store shelves because people are waiting for non-reference designs. If you can show me a 290 or 290X that's in stock at a U.S. store, then I'll be very surprised. There's no doubt about a shortage of chips. Otherwise, you would see at least one variant of the card (reference or non-reference) in stock.

The 280X is out of stock this week because of the rapid price increase of Litecoin. I don't know if that's spilled over to the much less economically priced 290 series or if there's not even enough Hawaii chips to satisfy the gaming market's demand.

Newegg still has stock, I purchased 4 290 on BF from there myself. Like you said, the recent buyout is due to the litecoin craze so I guess AMD lucked into that market.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Newegg still has stock.

Newegg's search results are frequently incorrect regarding availability, as your search inadvertently demonstrates. Even when the search results say "in stock," go to the individual product pages, and you'll notice they're all out of stock.

Until the Scrypt coin craze is over I don't expect the 280X, 290, or 290X to be available to anyone except those refreshing pages every 5 minutes. It's a good thing for AMD that they are getting lots of sales, but for anyone wanting to play games it basically restricts you to NVidia if you want a high end card.

Personally I think that the people buying cards solely for Scrypt mining at this point are getting in too late. They're too optimistic that profitability will remain constant. Looking at difficulty trends (and considering Litecoin adjusts difficulty 4x more frequently than Bitcoin) it won't be more than a few weeks before profitability becomes marginal. I'm looking forward in March to there being a glut of high end AMD cards for sale and being able to pick up a few for a steep discount.

 

[WhoDecidedThat]

Uh, $50 is 16.7% and 9% added cost to the 290 and 290X respectively. Where did you get 33%?

I was doing a comparison between a hypothetical ASUS R9 290 DC2 TOP and a ASUS R9 290X DC2 TOP card.

290 reference costs 400$. Add 50$ for DC2 enhancements and total is 450$.
290X reference costs 550$. Add 50$ and total is 600$.

600/450 = 1.33. That's how I got 33%. I am sorry I wasn't clear in my original post.