Radeon R9 290X Could Strike the $599.99 Price-point

[btarunr]

AMD's next-generation flagship graphics card, the Radeon R9 290X, could strike a US $599.99 (or 499.99€, £399.99 before taxes) price-point, turning up the heat on the more expensive offerings by NVIDIA - GeForce GTX 780 and GTX TITAN. The card should be available from mid-October. Based on the new 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon, the card is expected to feature 2,816 GCN stream processors, spread across 44 SIMDs (11 computing units). Other specifications include 172 TMUs, 44 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory, which likely achieves its >300 GB/s memory bandwidth with a 5.00 GHz memory clock. The company is expected to launch 6 GB variants of the card a little later.



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[silapakorn]

If this true then Titan's price will make even less sense.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I don't give a fµ¢k about the memory bus as long as it beats Titan, especially at this price.

 

[dj-electric]

300+GBps is enough for high-end gaming these days and i'm totally fine with it.

 

[fullinfusion]

The $600 dollar price point was stated by Erocker a while ago!

Time to cash in E!

 

[Prima.Vera]

Only 384 bit ? That tells the whole story that a site said there would be 6 GB version of 290X. It would also be very weird to pair a 512 bit mem interface with 6 GB VRAM by using 1Gb chips.

I agree that this thing should perform better than Titan yet it costs less.

What's the point of having 6GB of VRAM on your card, when 99.9% of the games are with x32 bit exes, and can only use maximum of 3.5GB VRAM and 3.5GB system RAM??

 

[fullinfusion]

What's the point of having 6GB of VRAM on your card, when 99.9% of the games are with x32 bit exes, and can only use maximum of 3.5GB VRAM and 3.5GB system RAM??

The point is.... IT has room to breeze through anything

 

[tom_mili]

What's the point of having 6GB of VRAM on your card, when 99.9% of the games are with x32 bit exes, and can only use maximum of 3.5GB VRAM and 3.5GB system RAM??

I don't know, maybe for e-peen and peace of mind that it would run games until the next decade

I don't even really benefit from my 3GB card, yet

 

[RCoon]

I don't know, maybe for e-peen and peace of mind that it would run games until the next decade

I don't even really benefit from my 3GB card, yet

But think of SKYRIM! I can annihilate 3GB pretty fast.
Also my 780 was brought to its knees(below 60FPS) in metro last light regardless of a 1.2Ghz overclock.

 

[Aquinus]

I want to see some real benchmarks. The lack of a 512-bit bus probably means that it doesn't need it. I would like to think that AMD's EEs know what they're doing, at least more so then everyone posting here so I would stop getting bent out of shape over it. It's a decent price point that I would consider but that completely depends on benchmarks.

 

[erocker]

I wonder if it's true that they're going to do pre-orders on the BF4 editions before the full specs are even released?! No thanks!

 

[buildzoid]

I only see one issue with the 384bit bus statement and that is that all the PCB pictures show 16 memory chips.
4GB / 16 = 256MB chips any other composition will give more than 4GB so the bus must be 512 bit or you use chips with less than 256MB which I have yet to see used on a modern GPU
Also asus stated that the bus is 512 bit link here: http://rog.asus.com/265242013/graphics-cards-2/amd-announces-new-r9-290x-and-new-graphics-lineup/

 

[Sempron Guy]

4GB on a 384-bit mem bus? now that is weird

 

[buggalugs]

Retail price is reasonable, only a littler more than the $549 of the 7970, and the 7970 was much faster than any Nvidia card at the time of release. Nvidia's high pricing on Titan and the 780 is dragging the price up it seems.

Retail price might not be the whole story though, depending on availability, the stores could wack on an early adopter tax, another $50-$80 if demand is more than supply. It happened with the 7970 for the first couple of months. Hopefully there is plenty of stock, so I can get one for $599.

 

[HumanSmoke]

I want to see some real benchmarks. The lack of a 512-bit bus probably means that it doesn't need it.

Sounds about right. Tahiti certainly isn't bandwidth constrained, more a raster op deficiency- which seems to have been remedied with Hawaii

RE: Pricing, according to Gibbo at OcUK...

R290 X unfortunately I cannot release pricing or specification info yet, but price wise its similar to GTX 780 but slightly faster, right now, of course AMD could change the launch price at any time

and...

R270 is HD 7950 re-boxed and these shall be reference design in beginning and prices from £170 region, so same as our lowest price 7950's. So OcUK is already at the new price, the newly boxed R270's will arrive middle-end October.

R280X is the HD 7970 GHz re-boxed and these shall be reference design in beginning and prices shall be around £230 region, so same again as our lowest priced 7970's. This makes our current Asus 7970's a bargain as they are TOP and Platinum cards, the equivalent of these in R280 X shall be in the £250-£300 region and available in their R280 X packaging around end of October.

 

[ensabrenoir]

not again....

...oh... oh.... I was warned as the launch get closer and closer..... the specs will fade... lower and lower.....

 

[progste]

399 would be crazy... please do it! =)

 

[jigar2speed]

399 would be crazy... please do it! =)

No no, 299 would be crazy... Please do it.












:shadedshu

 

[ensabrenoir]

399 would be crazy... please do it! =)

CRAZY GENEROUS!!!.....too bad they're not owned by vonage

....that commercial might not be playing in every country.......

 

[springs113]

I see $549-599...more likely going to be $609.99 all the way up to $639.99 from retailers like newegg. It's 512 bit no doubt and we will receive the specs by next week.

 

[Mathragh]

What's the point of having 6GB of VRAM on your card, when 99.9% of the games are with x32 bit exes, and can only use maximum of 3.5GB VRAM and 3.5GB system RAM??

Actually, Dice already stated that they will ship BF4 with a 64bit executable. I expect a lot more game delevopers going that route since going 32bit wont make a lot of sense when you can adress 8GB in both new consoles.

 

[Ikaruga]

the company is expected to launch 6 GB variants of the card a little later.

It's the early adopter enthusiast who are willing to buy everything what's new regardless of the price, so why not start with the best and most expensive version?

 

[ensabrenoir]

just read this :
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-r9-290x-battlefield-4-edition-8000-specs-pre-order_125224

makes me believe there will be a general purpose 290 and a limited edition titian killer with price to match....

 

[Naito]

I really hope it does. As much as I like Nvidia, their prices have gone crazy. Competition means lower prices.

 

[The Von Matrices]

4GB on a 384-bit mem bus? now that is weird

It's a 512-bit bus, so 4GB makes sense. I don't understand how they will put 6GB on a 512-bit bus though. Maybe reduce the bus width to 384-bit and clock it at 7GHz to match the bandwidth of the 512-bit bus?