MSI is pleased to announce that the new AMD R9 290 is available now for gamers shift away from the mainstream Full HD resolution and enter the work of 4K/UltraHD! Built on the refined Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architeture, featuring more advanced PowerTune power management, improved display connection flexibility and most importantly enthusiast-level gaming performance. Additionally, the new AMD R9 290 supports the latest industry standards such as Windows 8.1, DirectX11.2, OpenGL 4.3, OpenCL 1.2 and the new Mantle interface which leverages the next-gen console technology and Radeon Graphics. UltraHD or "4K" (4Kx2K resolution) is also supported over both DisplayPort and HDMI and supports up to six independent concurrent displays.

The new Hawaii Pro GPU powering the R9 290 runs at speeds up to 948 MHz and is packed with 4 GB of high speed GDDR5 to power your games running at the highest resolutions and with maximum detail settings. AMD's PowerTune technology controls Thermals, Power and Performance to maximize performance and minimize power consumption.

AMD announced the Radeon R9 290, its second graphics card based on the swanky new "Hawaii" silicon. The card is a slight cut-down of the R9 290X, and features 2,560 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. The core is clocked at 948 MHz, and the memory at 5.00 GHz, churning out a memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s. The reference design board of the R9 290 is practically identical to its older sibling. AMD is pricing the card at an impressive $399, a price at which it will make both the $330 GeForce GTX 770 and the $499 GeForce GTX 780 look repulsively overpriced. Non-reference boards are expected to arrive by late-November, in time for last-minute X'mas purchases.

AMD today announced three new game developer partnerships for Mantle, its highly acclaimed, groundbreaking graphics API. Cloud Imperium Games, Eidos-Montréal, a part of the Square Enix Group, and Oxide Games are the latest game developers to join AMD in optimizing the way PC games are developed to extract maximum performance from a modern graphics architecture that spans desktop PCs, notebooks and consumer devices like tablets.

"AMD is proud to play an instrumental role in transforming the world of game development with Mantle," said Ritche Corpus, director of ISV gaming and alliances, AMD. "With the support and close collaboration between AMD and industry-leading game developers like Cloud Imperium, Eidos-Montréal and Oxide, Mantle can maximize optimization for highly anticipated PC titles, bringing an unparalleled gaming experience for players."

MSRP (before taxes) pricing of AMD's upcoming Radeon R9 290 (non-X) being around $450 is looking increasingly likely. In a string of reports that Japanese publication Hermitage Akihabara published ahead of launches of the R9 290X and the R9 290, in which the publication talked about pricing in the country, a price difference of roughly 18 percent is emerging between the two. Applying that to the $549.99 MSRP of the R9 290X stateside, one can derive a $450 pricing for the R9 290. Granted, local taxation may greatly vary between Japan and other markets, affecting the end-user price, but pre-tax MSRPs can be consistent.

The Radeon R9 290 is expected to launch on the 5th of November, 2013. Based on the same "Hawaii" silicon as the Radeon R9 290X, it features 2,560 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. Its core is clocked around 948 MHz, and memory at 5.00 GHz.

One month ago, Enermax informed about the introduction of a new product line which is specially designed for the requirements of modern gaming machines. "Ahead of the Game" covers different PC areas. "The models of our new series allow for a game play on the highest level. They are the perfect choice for high-end systems and provide leading technology for the pure joy of gaming", explains Benjamin Schäfer, PR/Marketing Team Leader of Enermax Europe. With the midi tower iVektor, the first gaming series from Enermax made a perfect market debut. The racing-style chassis with the soft-grip coating offers a variety of functions and many possibilities for system upgrades. But for a steady flow of game at highest resolution, the hardware inside is the crucial factor.

Schäfer: "We offer users the perfect starter set to build up a performance-capable and at the same time durable gaming system. Most often, people focus on the graphics card or CPU only. But at the end, the power supply decides how stable a PC runs. If your system is crashing down regularly, the PSU might be a possible source of trouble. Therefore, it is worthwhile to spend more money in a quality brand product instead of buying the cheapest of the cheap models. And if you consider about an efficient cooling system, you need to know that you can not only prolong the lifetime of the installed components, but you can also draw the ultimate performance out of your hardware. You will only achieve the highest clock rates if you rely on the best cooling solution."

As a follow-up to our older article on how December-January will play out for AMD's next-generation APU lineup, we have news that the company will unveil, or at least tease its next-generation desktop APU, codename "Kaveri," on November 11, 2013. It's when the company will host its APU'13 event, modeled along the lines of GPU'13, held in Hawaii this September, where it unveiled its Radeon R9 200 and R7 200 GPU families. On its backdrop, the company will also hold its 2013 AMD Developer Summit, which brings together developers making software that take advantage of both CPU and OpenCL-accelerated GPUs. APU'13 will be held in San Jose, USA, and like GPU'13, will be live-streamed to the web. In addition to new APUs, the company is expected to make some big announcements with its HSA (heterogeneous system architecture) initiative that brought some big names in the industry on board.The agenda for APU'13 follows.

Hightech Information System (HIS) today proudly announces the HIS R9 270X IceQX² Turbo Boost Clock 2GB GDDR5. The new card is OC and features faster Boost Clock, IceQ X² is Cooler and Quieter, user-friendly iTurbo and Long Lasting Design. Armed with iPower design, the extra PWM phases provide the card with higher and more stable power output which leads to a better-than-expected overclocking. In comparison with 1000MHz of the reference board, the core clock of the card has been by default set at 1100MHz.

With the latest technologies and features of R9 270X chipset, the card provides an all-round graphic experience to all users. The state-of-the-art IceQX² coolers empower the card with the best cooling solution. The card is cooler than the reference design and is below 28dB during watching movies, surfing on internet and ordinary working. Even when graphic-intensive gaming is being played, the card still remains at very quiet level.

The TechPowerUp HWBOT team, in partnership with Intel, is announcing the TechPowerUp HWBOT Competition 2013. Spread across three tests which anyone can participate in - 3DMark 2001, 3DMark 03, and SuperPi 32M, the competition gives you the chance to win some cool new gear, including a Core i7-4770K quad-core processor, an AMD CPU and motherboard combo, and a PayPal cash prize. The contest is open from November 1, 2013 to December 15, 2013.

For more information, visit this page.

TechPowerUp announced GPU-Z 0.7.4, the latest version of the popular PC graphics subsystem information, monitoring, and diagnostics utility. Version 0.7.4 introduces support for several of the recently launched, and upcoming high-end graphics chips, including Radeon R9 290X, Radeon R9 290, and Radeon R9 270; from AMD's stable, and the GeForce GTX 780 Ti from NVIDIA. Among the other chips supported from the two, include the Radeon HD 8280, HD 7310; and GeForce GT 635, and Quadro K3100M.

GPU-Z 0.7.4 also introduces a number of fixes, including accuracy in reporting release date of the Radeon R9 280X, die-size of AMD "Tahiti," ROP counts on Intel "Haswell" and "Ivy Bridge" IGPs. The new GPU-Z also lets you extract video BIOS from AMD Radeon cards even without any driver for the GPU being installed. The mini stress-test that clogs the PCIe bus interface, forcing it to run at maximum possible speeds (thereby giving you an accurate picture of the PCIe configuration), can now be paused by left-clicking the stress render window. A few rare crashes with systems running Intel IGPs, were addressed.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.7.4 | GPU-Z 0.7.4 ASUS ROG-themed

The change-log follows.

As promised yesterday, AMD has issued a new Catalyst 13.11 driver build to fix the crashing bug reported by Battlefield 4 players with Windows 8 machines. This release is the Beta8 and it contains all the goodies of previous builds. The driver is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and features support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Download: Catalyst 13.11 Beta8 for Windows

AMD's share of the global GPU market is rising after the company launched its new Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 lines of discrete GPUs, and is expected to reach 40 percent over the next six months, according to sources associated with graphics card manufacturers based in Taiwan. In its recently announced Q3-2013 quarterly results, AMD announced net profits of $48 million, despite drops in revenues from notebook-related shipments, but revenues from customized products (custom-design graphics cards, etc,) and stable desktop (OEM) shipments helped the company turn a profit. Market analysts expect shipments of graphics cards to help sustain the company's growth in Q4, although some of them are conservative with their estimates.

Launch of AMD's Radeon R9 290 (non-X) is reportedly pushed back by a week, to Tuesday, November 5, 2013. The card was expected to launch on October 31, 2013. The reason for this delay? AMD reportedly developed a new driver that significantly improves performance on the R9 290. AMD pushed this driver onto reviewers at the last minute, and asked them to re-bench their R9 290 samples from scratch, extending their NDA till the 5th. The driver reportedly makes the R9 290 extremely competitive with GeForce GTX 780. A side-effect of that would be that the recently launched Radeon R9 290X could be rendered unattractive. It remains to be seen if the driver also proportionately improves performance on the R9 290X, and how AMD ends up pricing the R9 290.

Just like its arch-rival NVIDIA, AMD has kicked off the week by rolling out a new graphics driver, the seventh beta build of the Catalyst 13.11. This fresh release includes all the features found in the previous betas and brings improved (by up to 20%) CrossFire scaling in EA's Battlefield 4.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 is available for Windows 8.1/8/7 and offers support for the Radeon R9, R7, HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

Download: Catalyst 13.11 Beta7 for Windows

A leaked AMD slide detailed key dates in the product launch cycle for the company's next-generation desktop APU, codenamed "Kaveri." The chip will be officially announced on December 5, 2013. This is when AMD will post press-releases about the chip, but lack of market availability will make it more of a soft-launch. The chips should begin to ship to OEM vendors by late-December, 2013. It won't be until mid-February, 2014, that you'll be able to buy one of these chips in the retail channel. Built in the new socket FM2+ package, supporting the company's new A88X chipset, "Kaveri" will feature CPU cores based on the next-generation "Steamroller" micro-architecture, which offers an incremental (conservatively, around 10 percent) performance upgrade over "Piledriver;" a new GPU based on the Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture, TrueAudio technology, support for faster DDR3 memory standards, and PCI-Express gen 3.0 bus interface.

Prolimatech and Arctic independently announced support of their flagship VGA heatsinks for AMD's Radeon R9 290X graphics card. The MK-26 and MK-26 Black Series from Prolimatech, and the Accelero Xtreme III and Accelero Hybrid from Arctic, each support the R9 290X, and will by the same token, support the upcoming R9 290. The three are capable of handling the >250W TDP heat output of the R9 290X.

GIGABYTE, the world leader in high-performance gaming hardware and system, is pleased to introduce the midrange gaming grade graphics cards, Radeon R7 Series Overclock Edition Graphics Cards (GV-R726XWF2-2GD, GV-R726XOC-2GD, GV-R725OC-1GI and GV-R724OC-2GI). Engineered to be the world's most advanced graphics cards, Radeon R7 Series GPU features the award-winning GCN Architecture for spectacular gaming performance and power efficiency. With GIGABYTE's patented cooling system and factory overclocked, Radeon R7 Series guarantees gamers to have the best gaming experience with realistic visuals and fantastic gaming performance! Radeon R7 Series also features the latest AMD APP Acceleration, and supports Microsoft DirectX 11.2, AMD HD3D and PCI-Express 3.0. Looking for a midrange gaming graphics card? Radeon R7 Series is definitely the best choice for gamers.

If reviews of the Radeon R9 290X showed anything other than that it's fast enough to make the GTX TITAN look like a bad choice, it's that it's hot and noisy, and that the reference design cooling solution is hopelessly inadequate at keeping the temperatures and noise in check. At some point in the future, AMD was going to allow its add-in board (AIB) partners the freedom to launch non-reference design Radeon R9 290X, or at least cards with custom-design cooling solutions. That point is closer than we think, and could be as early as late-November, according to a SweClockers report.

According to the report, AMD's AIB partners will launch R9 290X graphics cards with custom-design air- and liquid-cooling solutions by late November, 2013. It's when the likes of DirectCU II, WindForce 450W, TwinFrozr IV, Vapor-X, and IceQ X2 will begin to associate with even the most basic R9 290X cards (which start at $549.99). AMD's R9 290X is currently available in only two SKUs, both of which are based on the AMD reference cooler design; the $549.99 standard edition, and the $569.99 Battlefield 4 Edition, which includes an Origin-redeemable key to Battlefield 4 (standard edition).

Hightech Information System (HIS) today announces the HIS R7 240 iCooler Boost Clock 2GB DDR3. HIS R7 240 iCooler Boost Clock 2GB DDR3 features Boost Clock for faster speed, iCooler for Quieter, iTurbo for simple overclocking. The card is equipped with iCooler, making it extremely quiet and noise level is less than 28dB. You feel the quietness when viewing photos, browsing webs, checking your email and playing movies in UVD mode. The card comes with the innovative overclocking software iTurbo. With the user-friendly design, the user can control the temperature, speed and voltage of the card by very simple steps.

Hightech Information System (HIS) today is pleased to announce the HIS R7 250 iCooler Boost Clock 1GB GDDR5. HIS R7 250 iCooler Boost Clock 1GB GDDR5 features Boost Clock for faster, iCooler for cooler & quieter, iTurbo for simple overclocking. The card is equipped with iCooler, making it extremely quiet and noise level is less than 28dB. You feel the quietness when viewing photos, browsing webs, checking your email and playing movies in UVD mode.

The card comes with the innovative overclocking software iTurbo. With the user-friendly design, the user can control the temperature, speed and voltage of the card by very simple steps. The card is further strengthened by HIS Long Lasting Design which effectively prolongs the life span of the card. The special metal RIB provides extra strength to the PCBs to avoid warpage. Loaded with AMD's latest technology, such as GCN, Apps Faster & Smoother and so on, the card has revolutionary improvements on computing performance, gaming experience as well as power consumption.

If these performance numbers posted by credible reviewers at OCUK hold up, then AMD could have a second, more affordable graphics card for you, which outperforms NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780, at least in synthetic benchmarks. In a brief performance run that spans synthetic tests, which included Unigine Heaven 3.0 at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, with normal level of tessellation; 3DMark 11 (performance preset) and 3DMark Fire Strike (both Normal and Extreme); the card we believe to be R9 290 (name blurred out in the graphs) is consistently faster than the GeForce GTX 780 reference, in the same bench.

Based on the same 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon as the Radeon R9 290X, the R9 290 is its more affordable sibling, featuring 2,560 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. It features clock speeds of 947 MHz (core), and 5.00 GHz (memory, GDDR5-effective). There's no word on pricing, but it could be available from the 31st of October, 2013.

VisionTek Products LLC, a leading manufacturer of award-winning, high-performance upgrades and accessories for PC and Apple Macintosh computers, announced today the VisionTek Radeon R9 290X graphics card. Featuring up to 1GHz clock speed, 4GB 512bit GDDR5 RAM, and compute performance over 5.6 TFLOPs, the $549MSRP VisionTek R9 290X is the fastest graphics card available and outperforms other, more expensive GPU brand-based graphics cards. VisionTek will begin shipping the R9 290X by early November.

GIGABYTE announced its Radeon R9 290X graphics cards. Available as a base-model priced at $549.99, and a Battlefield 4 Edition priced $25 more, GIGABYTE's R9 290X sticks to AMD-reference board design and clock speeds, of 1000 MHz core, and 5.00 GHz memory (GDDR5-effective). The company's OC Guru II software is part of the package. Based on the 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon, the Radeon R9 290X features 2,816 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, four independent tessellation units, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory.

In the past weeks you have probably read about the new AMD Radeon R9 and R7 series graphics cards. As replacement for the outgoing HD 7XXX series AMD has announced the all new R9 series high end gaming cards and the R7 series mid range all rounders. The R9 270X and 280X are great cards, packed with features and offering a level of performance never seen before at their respective price points. But the moment is finally there to announce the all new flagship of the range, the Radeon R9 290X!

A new era in gaming has begun and gamers who demand the best deserve a new class of GPU's. These GPU's will carry the R9 label from now on. When you see an R9 card you can easily distinguish it as an enthusiast product. With the new R9 290X cards representing the absolute top of the charts.

HIS announced its Radeon R9 290X graphics card duo, both of which stick to AMD's reference board design, with reference clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 5.00 GHz memory; and differ only with the packaging. The HIS R9 290X Fan is the base model, while the HIS R9 290X Fan Battlefield 4 Edition is practically the same card, but with an Origin key to Battlefield 4. The base model is priced at $549.99, while the Battlefield 4 Edition could charge a $25 premium over that (still cheaper than buying the game off Origin). Based on the 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon, the R9 290X features 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, 4 Tessellation Units, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide memory interface, holding 4 GB of GDDR5 memory.

XFX announced its Radeon R9 290X graphics card, the R9-290X-ENFC. The card is every bit identical to AMD's reference design, and includes an Origin key to Battlefield 4. Based on the 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon, it features 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 4 tessellation units, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. It features reference clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 5.00 GHz memory. Available now, the XFX Radeon R9 290X is priced at $570.