AMD cut prices of its Radeon R9 290 series and R9 280 series graphics cards further down from last month's price-cuts. The cuts see the company's flagship single-GPU product, the Radeon R9 290X, drop from $449, down to $399, an $150 overall drop, from its launch price of $549. The Radeon R9 290, on the other hand, has its price cut to $299, from its launch price of $399. The drop in price of the R9 290 is squeezing AMD's sub-$300 lineup like never before. The R9 280X is down to $270, just $30 less than the R9 290. The R9 285, which launched barely two months ago, has its price squeezed to $229, just $10 more than NVIDIA's GTX 760. If you're in the market for a graphics card with about $250 in hand, you're now open to a ton of options, including ramen for a week, in exchange for the $329 GeForce GTX 970.

Alphacool International GmbH, Germany announces internal testing results of the new GPU cooler. After the announcement of the custom GPU service Alphacool have been busy testing the final prototypes in the Alphacool TestLab. Below you can see the new solution fitted on the Sapphire 280x (Production version will have anodized black heatsinks).

In order to get accurate test results Alphaccol has invested heavily in a fully temperature controlled TestLab room. Below you can see the Alphacool TestLab setup, to remain un-biased Alphacool test their products with a variety of other brands. In the tests for the Sapphire 280x Alphacool used the TestLab to find the temperature differences between the stock cooler and the new custom cooler. The tests were ran with the card fully overclocked with the ambient temperature set to 20°C.

A round of applause for the winners of the TITANFALL Facebook Giveaway TechPowerUp ran, in partnership with GIGABYTE, and its Aivia line of elite gaming peripherals. Starting March 24th, we ran a neat little giveaway that saw over 3,600 participants take a shot at winning some cool gaming hardware by GIGABYTE, by simply "Liking" our Facebook page, filling in a brief form, and answering a handful easy questions. A big congrats to the following winners:

• Szabolcs from Hungary, wins GIGABYTE Radeon R9 280X WindForce OC graphics card,
• Crystal from the United States, wins TITANFALL Collector's Edition Bundle,
• Jonathan from Israel, wins GIGABYTE Aivia Uranium gaming mouse, and
• Carl from Norway, wins GIGABYTE Aivia Osmium mechanical gaming keyboard

TechPowerUp will return, with more fun giveaways.

TechPowerUp and GIGABYTE are back with our latest Facebook Giveaway, celebrating the season's hottest online multiplayer shooter, Titanfall. Up for grabs are some cool GIGABYTE gaming hardware, including a GIGABYTE Radeon R9 280X WindForce OC graphics card, a Titanfall Collector's Edition package, a GIGABYTE Aivia Osmium mechanical gaming keyboard, and a GIGABYTE Aivia Uranium gaming mouse. To participate, all you have to do is "Like" our Facebook page (if you haven't already), fill in a really short form (or have Facebook do it for you), and answer three simple questions related to GIGABYTE's Aivia line of gaming peripherals. The contest runs from today (24th March) to 7th April.For more information, and to participate, visit this page. Good Luck!

CyberPower Inc., a global manufacturer of custom gaming PCs, today announced its MEGA MINER series, a family of high-performance systems designed and optimized not only for gaming, but for cryptocurrency mining as well. The MEGA MINER series is powered by AMD's Radeon R9 series graphics cards, which provide up to 1000KHash/sec on a single card. With the ability to add up to three cards per system, the MEGA MINER has been intelligently designed with the GPU power to perform the necessary calculations faster to earn more coins.

The MEGA MINER series comes with a choice of AMD's FX-4300 processor or Intel's Core i3-4130 Haswell processor depending on the model. The series also utilizes the Thermaltake DPS series of 80 Plus digital power supplies, which conveniently monitor one of the most vital pieces of information all coin miners need to know - your electricity cost. The MEGA MINER systems combine powerful mining hardware with the precision and control of Thermaltake DPS power supplies for the best coin mining experience.

MSI announced the only Radeon R9 280X graphics card out there, with double its standard memory amount. The R9 280 Gaming 6G features 6 GB of GDDR5 memory across the GPU's 384-bit wide memory interface, and clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, 1050 MHz boost, and 6.00 GHz memory. The card features a custom-design PCB with memory chips on both its sides, and the company's Twin Frozr IV cooling solution in its signature Gaming Series livery. The company didn't release pricing or availability details.

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana-based premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is proud to introduce the full-cover water cooling solution for the ASUS engineered Direct CU II series AMD Radeon R9 280X graphics card.

EK-FC R9-280X DCII water block directly cools the GPU, RAM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks.

In what could explain AMD's move to include copies of one of the most GPU-intensive games with its new A-Series APUs, the company revealed that Mantle, its ambitious attempt at a 3D graphics API to rival DirectX and OpenGL, "enables up to 45 percent faster performance" than DirectX in Battlefield 4, the only known game with planned support for Mantle, and one of the most popular PC games of the season. AMD's claims are so tall, that even a 512 stream processor-laden A10-7850K APU could offer acceptable frame-rates at 1080p, while a $299 Radeon R9 280X could run circles around a $650 GeForce GTX 780 Ti at this particular game. If anything, it could help Battlefield 4 become a potent tech-demonstrator for the API, selling it to the various game developers AMD has built strong developer relations with.

XFX rolled out its first non-reference design Radeon R9 290 series graphics cards, the Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation (model: R9-290X-EDFD), and the R9 290 Double Dissipation (model: R9-290A-EDFD). The two are based on a common board design, with a non-reference design PCB by the company, and its tall, dual-slot Double Dissipation cooling solution that's featured on the company's Radeon R9 280X DD graphics card. The cooler uses a dense aluminium fin stack to which head drawn from the GPU is fed by copper heat pipes, and dissipated by a pair of 80 mm fans. As an added bonus, the "XFX" logo on the cooler shroud lights up. Both cards stick to AMD reference clock speeds. That's 1000 MHz core and 5.00 GHz memory for the R9 290X, and 947 MHz core and 5.00 GHz memory for the R9 290. The two are offered at prices identical to reference-design cards, or a tiny premium in some markets.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards, today launches another high performance model which belongs to TurboDuo series, the PowerColor TurboDuo R9 280X OC. Featuring the most innovative GCN architecture, the TurboDuo R9 280X OC fully utilizes the AMD Eyefinity technology, and support ultra high resolution gaming, providing unrivaled performance without sacrifice a single detail.

The new TurboDuo R9 280X OC runs at a factory-overclock of 880 MHz, even reach to 1030 MHz with boost, together with 1500 MHz for memory clock, using 384-bit high speed memory interface connects to 3GB of GDDR5 memory, indulging gamers with higher frame rates. In addition to default OC setting, the TurboDuo R9 280X OC takes advantage of PowerColor's exclusive Gold Power Kit, which includes multi-phases design, DirectFET and Digital PWM, delivering the best OC performance with stability.

Gigabyte rolled out Battlefield 4 special editions of several of its Radeon R9 200 series graphics card models, other than the R9 290 series. The packages of these cards include Origin keys to Battlefield 4. Among the cards launched are the GV-R928XOC-3GD-GA, based on the Radeon R9 280X, the GV-R927XOC-2GD-GA, based on the Radeon R9 270X, and the GV-R927OC-2GD-GA, based on the R9 270. The R9 280X and R9 270X cards stick to AMD reference clock speeds, while the R9 270-based card features a tiny 50 MHz OC. The R9 280X and R9 270X based models feature WindForce 450W triple-fan coolers; while the R9 270 card is based on a simpler WindForce 2X Triangle Cooling solution. Gigabyte didn't disclose pricing or availability.

SAPPHIRE Technology, the world leading supplier of graphics cards based on the latest GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture from AMD, has just announced that it will now bundle vouchers for the exciting new game Battlefield 4 with several new products in its recently launched R-Series of graphics accelerators.

Battlefield 4 has been heralded as the most exciting and realistic game to be launched for some time, and looks its best and runs most smoothly on GCN based graphics cards. SAPPHIRE originally launched a Special Edition of the flagship R9 290X graphics accelerator bundled with a Battlefield 4 voucher.

AMD is planning to release a revision of the Radeon R9 280X this late-November, based on the new "Tahiti-XTL" silicon. Originally designed to be based on that ASIC, the R9 280X ended up being based on "Tahiti XT2," the same exact ASIC that drives the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, as "Tahiti XTL" wasn't ready for its early-October launch. The new silicon promises lower power consumption, heat output, and in turn, lower fan noise output. AMD won't announce the revision, but perform a "running change" for its add-in board partners. The only way you'll be able to tell it's a "Tahiti XTL" based R9 280X, apart from disassembling the card, will be reading its BIOS.

Hightech Information System (HIS) today proudly announces the HIS R9 280X iPower IceQX2 Turbo Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5. HIS R9 280X iPower IceQX2 Turbo Boost Clock 3GB GDDR5 features iPower for more voltage, Boost Clock & Turbo for appealing performance, IceQX2 for cooler and quieter. 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 850MHz of the reference board, the core clock of the card has been by default set at 1000MHz.

With the latest technologies and features of R9 280X 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 work. Even when graphic-intensive gaming is being played, the card still remains at very quiet level. 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.

Here are results from the first formal review of the Radeon R9 290X, AMD's next-generation flagship single-GPU graphics card. Posted by Chinese publication PCOnline.com.cn, the it sees the R9 290X pitted against the GeForce GTX TITAN, and GeForce GTX 780. An out-of-place fourth member of the comparison is the $299 Radeon R9 280X. The tests present some extremely interesting results. Overall, the Radeon R9 290X is faster than the GeForce GTX 780, and trades blows, or in some cases, surpasses the GeForce GTX TITAN. The R9 290X performs extremely well in 3DMark: FireStrike, and beats both NVIDIA cards at Metro: Last Light. In other tests, its half way between the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN, leaning closer to the latter in some tests. Power consumption, on the other hand, could either dampen the deal, or be a downright dealbreaker. We'll leave you with the results.More results follow.

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is working on a new Full Cover water block for the latest, two-slot revision of ASUS R9280X-DC2(T) series graphics card, powered by AMD Radeon R9 280X GPU.

At the moment ASUS has two physically different revisions of R9280X-DC2(T) series graphics cards on the market. The first revision, called the ASUS R9280X-DC2(T)-3GD5-V2, is already compatible with our existing EK-FC7970 DCII water block while the ASUS R9280X-DC2(T)-3GD5 is a complete redesign and thus not compatible with the said water block.

XFX today unveiled the XFX Radeon R9 290X, R9 290, R9 280X, R9 270X, R7 260X and R7 250 graphics cards, XFX's first series of AMD GPUs with AMD's 2nd Generation GCN Architecture and PowerTune Technology designed for super optimized gaming performance. XFX's new GPUs also feature AMD's Mantle and AMD TrueAudio technology, the latest innovations that redefine the GPU by enabling both gamers and game developers with unprecedented audio and performance enhancements for compatible games.

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium water cooling gear manufacturer, is pleased to announce that the existing EK-FC series water blocks are compatible with the majority of AMD Radeon R9 280X based graphics card officially launched two days ago.

Because the Radeon R9 280X is based on a Tahiti XT GPU (the very same GPU used on the Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 graphics cards) and no prescribed reference design the majority of graphics card manufactured have simply re-used it's existing circuit board design - either the most commonly used design is a AMD reference design (109-C38637) or a proprietary design such as ASUS DirectCU II and MATRIX.

AMD offers greater flexibility with its multi-GPU solutions, letting you mix and match any two GPUs based on the same silicon. It was quite natural to expect a Radeon R9 280X to work in tandem with a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition from the previous generation, since the two are based on the same "Tahiti" GPU, which is now proven. HardwareCanucks managed to run that combo without a hitch, and log performance results across a bouquet of game tests. The publication also notes that one should be able to similarly pair a Radeon R9 270X with a Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition (the one based on "Pitcairn," not "Tahiti LE"). Have a Radeon HD 7950? Feel free to add an R9 280X to the mix.

In the wake of AMD rolling out the $299 Radeon R9 280X, $199 Radeon R9 270X, and $139 Radeon R7 260X; NVIDIA is giving final touches to price cuts to several of its SKUs, beginning with the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost. Originally priced at $149, pricing of the card could be adjusted closer to that of the R7 260X. Our review of the card revealed NVIDIA's offering to be a staggering 24 percent faster overall. NVIDIA could also lower the price of the now $180 GeForce GTX 660. All eyes, however, are on the $249 GeForce GTX 760, which is sandwiched by AMD's offerings.

There's also talk of NVIDIA developing a new SKU, possibly the "GeForce GTX 760 Ti" or "GeForce GTX 765" (likely names), to occupy the $240~260 price range. We expect this chip to be essentially an overclocked GeForce GTX 670 with GPU Boost 2.0; which may not quite go after the R9 280X, since it's already performing on par with the GeForce GTX 770. The new price cuts could take effect very soon; although DigiTimes isn't ruling out a second round of price-cuts in November, either.

VisionTek Products LLC, (VisionTek) a leading manufacturer of award-winning, high-performance upgrades and accessories for PC and Apple Macintosh computers, announced today five new VisionTek Radeon graphics cards built with the recently introduced Advance Micro Devices (AMD) Radeon R7 Series and R9 Series GPUs. Priced from $69.00 MSRP, the new VisionTek Radeon graphics cards will utilize award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, install in any open PCIe 3.0 slot, and will begin shipping Monday, October 14.

Five VisionTek Cards for Every Gaming Desire and Budget
With over two decades of video card development experience, VisionTek is well positioned to develop cutting edge graphics cards that introduce new standards of visual, audio, and compute capabilities. The new line of five cards is comprised of three Radeon R7 Series cards that bring an ideal balance of performance and features, and two Radeon R9 Series cards made for gamers who demand the best. The entire R7/R9 Series is the first to offer complete support for the DIRECTX 11.2 graphics standard which offers stunning 3D visual effects, realistic lighting, and lifelike imagery.

GIGABYTE, the leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, is pleased to announce GIGABYTE Radeon R9 280X Overclock Edition Graphics Card (GV-R928XOC-3GD) and GIGABYTE Radeon R9 270X Overclock Edition Graphics Card (GV-R927XOC-2GD). GIGABYTE once again not only launch new model, but make the new models factory overclocked! With patented WINDFORCE 3X, GV-R928XOC-3GD and GV-R927XOC-2GD perform fantastic for gamers. GV-R928XOC-3GD with 2048 GCN stream processor and 3 GB high-speed GDDR5 memory runs at 384-bit memory interface; GV-R927XOC-2GD with 1280 GCN stream processor, 2 GB high-speed GDDR5 memory and 256-bit memory interface.

GV-R928XOC-3GD is equipped with exclusive WINDFORCE 3X plus patented "Triangle Cool" technology. The powerful airflow and heat dissipation capability keeps the graphics card cool and quiet, and of course leads to the best performance. Even more, both GV-R928XOC-3GD and GV-R927XOC-2GD are well overclocked to 1100 MHz at boost clock. These two models are packed with groundbreaking features like DirectX 11.2, AMD PowerTune and CrossFire technology. Gamers should never settle for anything less.

If with great power comes great responsibility then definitely with new graphics cards come brand new drivers. Enter the AMD Radeon R9 and R7 Series cards and the first (publicly-available) driver to support them, the Catalyst 13.11. Still in beta mode, this fresh Catalyst works with the Radeon R9 280X, R9 270X, R7 260X, R7 250 and R7 240, as well as the Radeon HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 Series cards.

The Catalyst 13.11 Beta (V1) is supposed to feature some fixes, plus improvements for Battlefield 4 as well as for TESV: Skyrim and Total War: Rome 2. To download the driver just click on the links below.

• AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta V1 Driver for Windows 7/8/8.1
• AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta V1 Driver for Linux

Club 3D launches Radeon R9 280X and 270X graphics cards. Since their introduction almost two years ago the HD 7970 and HD 7950 have been on top of the GPU food chain and, as a result of the recent price repositioning, are still very capable performers offering great value for money. But now it's time to announce their successors in the high end, enthusiast segment. 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.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced the launch of Matrix R9 280X Platinum edition and Matrix R9 280X standard edition, two new graphics cards powered by the latest AMD Radeon R9 280X graphics-processing unit (GPU). As dedicated gamers have come to expect from ROG, the new Matrix R9 280X graphics cards are tricked out with exclusive technologies and tools including an efficient copper-based thermal design for faster performance at lower temperatures, VGA Hotwire connections for voltage control, DIGI+ voltage-regulator modules (VRMs) for smooth and stable power and GPU Tweak, an easy-to-use tuning software that allows users to squeeze every last drop of performance out of their graphics card.