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.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards, today add other choice into R9 series for hardcore gamers, the PowerColor R9 290 OC. Based on brand new "Hawaii" GPU, the R9 290 offers gamers latest DirectX 11.2 support, delivering fierce performance and revolutionary intelligence. Meanwhile, users are available to experience 4K ultra resolution gaming now without sacrificing a single detail.

The PowerColor R9 290 OC is built with AMD "Hawaii" GPU, which utilizes the latest GCN architecture, and 2560 stream processors, providing best performance without compromise. Also, The R9 290 OC use the highest standard memory with 4G GDDR5, clocked at 975 MHz of core which is 30 MHz above reference board, together with 1200 MHz memory clocks, offering gamers an immediate framerate gain. Furthermore, sharing the same memory interface, 512-bit, with R9 290X, successfully tackles demanding games titles without effort.

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.

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.

With AMD's Radeon R9 290X and the upcoming Radeon R9 290, both NVIDIA's GTX TITAN, and GTX 780 are disrupted at their price points. NVIDIA is fixing its GTX TITAN competitive woes with the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, but it's looking like the GTX 780, despite its price cut to $500, could face trouble from the cheaper Radeon R9 290. NVIDIA's more hands-on solution? Launch a new SKU, that's and backed by non-reference designs for the most part, which some of its add-in card (AIC) partners are referring to as "GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition."

Simply put, the "GeForce GTX 780 GHz Edition" is your ordinary GTX 780 with increased clock speeds of 1006 MHz core, 1046 MHz GPU Boost, and an untouched 6.00 GHz memory. The card is based on a new stepping of the GK110 silicon, labeled "GK110-300-B1," compared to the original's "GK110-300-A1." Expreview discovered its Inno3D GTX 780 iChill HerculeZ 3000 graphics card to be based on this new silicon, and at its given speeds of 1006/1046/6008 MHz, found to to be about 15 percent faster than a standard GTX 780, and about 7 percent faster than a GTX TITAN. It's also about 6.2 percent faster than an R9 290X on the same test-bed. Power consumption isn't up significantly, and the cooler that's an Arctic Cooling solution, does a good job at keeping the temperatures manageable, and keeps throttle limits away. Find the complete review at the source.

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.

Gelid announced compatibility of its Icy Vision rev. 2.0 VGA cooler with Radeon R9 290X, Radeon R9 280X, Radeon R9 270X, and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780, and GeForce GTX 770. The "Rev. 2 ICY VISION" cooler contains 5 power heatpipes in a unique heatpipe constellation. The heatpipes are interlaced into 85 optimized high-quality aluminium fins. Together with a flat stack fin soldered Copper base, they enable the most efficient heat transmission and dissipation from GPU core in its class. Besides the heatsink, two 92mm UV-reactive fans with 11 blades in S-shape generate 20% additonal air flow than traditional fans. The fan contains a high-quality ball bearing to ensure a longer lifetime in high temperature environments. MSRP: US $55.

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.

A Sapphire-branded Radeon R9 290 was pictured by ChipHell. The card is based on AMD's reference board design, which in turn is identical to that of the R9 290X, including the same number of memory chips, the same combination of 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors, dual-BIOS, and the same number of VRM phases. Leaked specifications reveal that the R9 290 will feature 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 4 GB of memory across a 512-bit wide memory interface. It's also reportedly priced at $449.99.

Koolance announced its Radeon R9 290X-compatible full-coverage water block, the VID-AR290X. If the upcoming Radeon R9 290 (non-X) ends up being based on the same PCB, it will be compatible with that card as well. Materials used in its construction include nickel-plated copper (primary block), nickel-plated brass (fittings), and stainless steel (bolts). Tops come in clear acrylic and opaque acetal options. The block features a micro-fin lattice over the GPU area, for heat dissipation. The coolant channel covers the GPU, memory, and VRM areas. Fitting threading is standard G 1/4 BSPP. The block weighs about 910 g. Koolance didn't finalize its pricing.

If at $549.99, AMD's Radeon R9 290X trumps the $650 GeForce GTX 780, and $1000 GeForce GTX TITAN, the Radeon R9 290 (non-X) could make NVIDIA's offerings look even worse. AMD could give the R9 290 a starting price of $449.99, $100 cheaper than the R9 290X. All you stand to lose between the two are 256 stream processors, 16 TMUs, and a slightly lower GPU clock speed, of 946 MHz, according to leaked specifications. Late last week, a handful benchmarks of the R9 290 were leaked to the web, which showed the chip to be highly competitive, and sometimes even faster, than the GTX 780, at $200 lower the price. Arabic publication DarkLord Tech posted a handful more benchmark results to show just that.

AMD has now made available a new version of the Catalyst 13.11 graphics card drive. Still bearing a beta tag, the updated Catalyst delivers performance boosts and adds support for the Radeon R9 290X and R9 290. The driver also works with the rest of the R9 Series, the R7 models, and the Radeon HD 7000, HD 6000 and HD 5000 cards.

Download: AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 for Windows 8.1/8/7

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.

Here's the first picture of an AIB-branded Radeon R9 290 (non-X) graphics card, the Club3D Radeon R9 290. The card sticks to AMD's reference board design, which like the Radeon R9 290X, could have exclusive market presence for a while, before AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners come up with their own board designs. This particular card features a factory-overclock, although we don't have the clock speeds at hand. The reference design clock speeds, which will be loaded into the card's failsafe secondary BIOS, will be 946 MHz core, and 5.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. Based on the 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon, the Radeon R9 290 features 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory.

Around all the buzz surrounding the Radeon R9 290X, we're ignoring its smaller, more affordable sibling, the Radeon R9 290 (non-X). It's being reported that the SKU will be formally launched on the 31st of October, 2013. From leaked AMD presentation slides, we know that the R9 290 is based on the same 28 nm "Hawaii" silicon as the R9 290X, but with a lower stream processor count, standing at 2,560, and a proportionately lower TMU count, at 160. The rest of the components on the chip are untouched, it still features a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory. The GPU core is clocked up to 946 MHz, and memory at 5.00 GHz, churning out 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The leak also highlighted the review NDA lifting time for the R9 290X, which is tomorrow.

Disappointed at the $729.99 Newegg.com pricing of the Radeon R9 290X? No worries. AMD's second SKU based on the "Hawaii" silicon could be lighter on the wallet. Japanese retailers leaked the specifications sheets of both the upcoming R9 290X, and its lighter sibling, the R9 290 (non-X). Specifications of the R9 290X match rumors. The chip features 2,816 stream processors, up to 1000 MHz of GPU clock, single-precision floating point performance of 5.16 TFLOP/s, and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 512-bit wide memory interface, clocked at 5.00 GHz, yielding 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The R9 290, on the other hand, features 2,560 stream processors, up to 948 MHz GPU clocks, 4.9 TFLOP/s single-precision floating point performance, and the same memory subsystem as the R9 290X. Both cards feature an identical combination of power connectors, 8-pin PCIe and 6-pin PCIe. Both feature hardware support for DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, and Mantle.

Here's a quick recap of AMD's updated product stack, spread between the R9 and R7 series. This article can help you understand the new nomenclature. AMD's lineup begins with the Radeon R7 250 and Radeon R7 260X. The two are based on the 28 nm "Curacao" silicon, which is a variation of the "Pitcairn" silicon the previous-generation Radeon HD 7870 was based on. The R7 250 is expected to be priced around US $89, with 1 GB of RAM, and performance rated at over 2,000 points by 3DMark Firestrike benchmark. The R7 260X, features double the memory at 2 GB, higher clock speeds, possibly more number crunching resources, Firestrike score of over 3,700 points, and a pricing that's around $139. This card should turn up the heat against the likes of GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost.

Moving on, there's the $199 Radeon R9 270X. Based on a chip not much unlike "Tahiti LE," it features 2 GB of memory, and 3DMark Firestrike score of over 5,500 points. Then there's the Radeon R9 280X. This card, priced attractively at $299, is practically a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with. It features 3 GB of RAM, and over 6,800 points on 3DMark Firestrike. Then there are the R9 290 and R9 290X. AMD flew dozens of scribes thousands of miles over to Hawaii, and left them without an official announcement on the specifications of the two. From what AMD told us, the two feature 4 GB of memory, over 5,000 TFLOP/s compute power, and over 300 GB/s memory bandwidth. The cards we mentioned are pictured in that order below.More pictures follow.

AMD's approach to the next-generation product stack isn't structured too differently from that of NVIDIA's current. The company is launching just one big (high-end) chip, codenamed "Hawaii," based on which it's launching the Radeon R9 290X. It's been detailed to death in our older posts. The Radeon R9 280X, on the other hand, is we're hearing a re-badged Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. At the most, expect a slight clock speed bump, and a different reference-design board, but for the most part, it's shaping up to be identical. The approach draws parallels with the NVIDIA's lineup. The Radeon R9 290X is expected to compete with the GeForce GTX TITAN, R9 290 with GTX 780, and R9 280X with the GTX 770. While launch of the R9 290 series will be tightly controlled by AMD (i.e., don't expect non-reference designs for a while), the R9 280X will launch entirely by non-reference designs. The three cards will launch a little later this week.

Here are the first pictures of AMD's next-generation flagship graphics card, the Radeon R9 290X. If the naming caught you off-guard, our older article on AMD's new nomenclature could help. Pictured below is the AMD reference-design board of the R9 290X. It's big, and doesn't have too much going on with its design. At least it doesn't look Fisher Price like its predecessor. This reference design card is all that you'll be able to buy initially, and non-reference design cards could launch much later.

With its cooler taken apart, the PCB is signature AMD, you find digital-PWM voltage regulation, Volterra and CPL (Cooperbusmann) chippery, and, well, the more obvious components, the GPU and memory. The GPU, which many sources point at being built on the existing 28 nm silicon fab process, and looks significantly bigger than "Tahiti." The chip is surrounded by not twelve, but sixteen memory chips, which could indicate a 512-bit wide memory interface. At 6.00 GHz, we're talking about 384 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Other rumored specifications include 2,816 stream processors, four independent tessellation units, 176 TMUs, and anywhere between 32 and 64 ROPs. There's talk of DirectX 11.2 support.It gets better, the source also put out benchmark figures.

TechPowerUp announced the latest update to GPU-Z, the popular graphics hardware information, monitoring and diagnostics utility. Version 0.7.3 brings in a few major changes, keeping in mind plans by AMD and NVIDIA to update their product stacks, a little later this year. We've added preliminary support for Radeon R7 240, R7 250, R7 260X, R9 270, R9 270X, R9 290, and R9 290X. On the NVIDIA front, we've added support for GeForce GT 625, GT 645, GT 755M, GT 745M, GTX 760M, GTX 765M, GTX 770M, Quadro K1100M, and K5100M. Support was also added for AMD Radeon HD 7600G, HD 8250, HD 8330, HD 8470G, HD 8570, HD 8570G, and E6460; FirePro W7000, and W600. GPU-Z 0.7.3 brings improved support for GeForce GTX 780 graphics cards with CHiL CHL8318 voltage controllers, and GeForce cards in general, with NCP4206 controllers.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.7.3 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.7.3 ASUS ROG-themed

The complete change-log follows.