AMD Begins Massive Wave of Price Cuts on R9 290x and 290

[patrickjp93]

mmmm how sexy would two watercooled 290's in CFX be? Do you have a specific waterblock in mind? I've never made the jump to custom loop but it's on my "bucket list" for PC Builds.

If you're going to buy a water block that can go balls to the wall for years, go EKWB. Hands down the best GPU block engineering on this planet. EVGA consults them for crying out loud on their hydrocopper designs.

[The_Evenger]

dalekphalm, on 06 Oct 2014 - 12:27 PM, said:

mmmm how sexy would two watercooled 290's in CFX be? Do you have a specific waterblock in mind? I've never made the jump to custom loop but it's on my "bucket list" for PC Builds.

well I have the gigabyte variant so I only have one block compatible with my PCB as far as I know (http://www.frozencpu.com/products/24128/ex-blc-1716/EK_MSI_Gigabyte_Radeon_R9-290X_VGA_Liquid_Cooling_Block_Rev_20_-_Acetal_Nickel_EK-FC_R9-290X_-_AcetalNickel_Rev20.html?tl=g57c599s2078&id=TWVFujig)

anyway it's been on my bucket list for a while too and it's finally the next thing to do on my to-do list! I made a post about my upgrade, but no one responded and it disappeared from the sub-forum completely. oh well...

[deathjester]

Yes but i haven't wrote that .

I wrote that 970 needs 500w minimum while 290 and 280 need 750w minimum

you must misunderstood.

 

The power usage is overblown for a few reasons.

 

1) AMD CPU's use more power and many people buy AMD/AMD, and they are giving a OC to hell estimate (which is still too high on a good brand PSU). Add to that many people are still on OC to hell Sandy Bridges at like 1.4v and aren't moving from that platform (don't blame em).

2) Many PSU brands/makes suck balls. A 800 watt Diablotek is prob worse then a 350 watt Antec.

 

The 290 isn't far from a 780ti on power usage. This is total system usage from Hardware Canucks, which I put up there with anandtech and this is on a Intel i7 3930K @ 4.5GHz. Looks like the anandtech article is missing but it found the same thing. Is Maxwell better on power usage? Sure. Compared to last gen though the AMD's aren't bad on power at all. You might as well call Titan Blacks a piece of crap due to power usage...and that certainly isn't true. I think we would all gladly take one. 

 

 

 

 

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/65172-sapphire-r9-290-4gb-tri-x-oc-review-3.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290

Anandtech article was working the other day. One of the reasons I bought this GPU.

[costillax]

Sweet Jesus :mellow:

 

[FratStar]

MORE PROOF

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-2.html

 

Not to mention that the 9xx series supports DX 12 while the AMD 290 series does  not support it.

Um AMD stated that all cards with the GCN architecture are going to support DX 12. So idk where you got that from.

[deathjester]

Um AMD stated that all cards with GCN is going to support DX 12. So idk where you got that from.

 

Pretty sure he got that from the looney bin, especially considering DX 12 is basically Mantle that also works with GTX cards. Mantle uses the DX library. 

 

What we know about DX 12.

1. It will be easily ported from Mantle per AMD, which is one reason why devs are starting to use it on games.

2. It will work on AMD 7000 series and up and Fermi and up as far as low level abstraction.

3. Looks like MS is locking it to Windows 10 for "reasons", which would kill adoption rate by game developers due to market share, meanwhile Mantle has support now due to market share. They aren't ahead of Nvidia but they are ahead of DX 11.2 adoption (win 8.1). AKA it is worth devs time due to market share and an easy transition to 12. 

 

Nvidia DSR? That is downsampling. You can do that on old series from any make. MFAA isn't available at launch. The other improvements? We MIGHT see them on a heavily Nvidia sponsored game, but chances are we won't because the consoles use AMD 7000 series architecture. We will also probably see games that will use Tress FX 2, because the console hardware is AMD, like the next Tomb Raider and Tress FX runs better on AMD, just like Nvidia hairworks runs better on Nvidia.

[BarisERY]

300 series inc.

[DaMagicalManiac]

They do, but honestly GPU overclocking for gaming makes a 1-3 fps difference so I dont get the point really

Free performance is exactly what overclocking is.

 

In many situations a couple fps won't make a difference, but sometimes you'll want that couple extra fps to keep you dipping to58 or 59 fps to, hopefully, reach 60 or over.

[BobbyG2]

These price drops and die shrinks are looking very promising. Excited to see what ~$500 will get me this spring. Maybe 4k on a single card? One could hope.

[MEC-777]

Loving these GPU wars. It's nothing but great news for us as consumers. 

 

$299 (CDN) for a brand new R9-290 (and not a crappy one). Thank you, price cuts!

[deathjester]

These price drops and die shrinks are looking very promising. Excited to see what ~$500 will get me this spring. Maybe 4k on a single card? One could hope.

 

LTT did a benchmark of Mordor. The R9 290/970 can pretty much do a locked 30FPS at 4k. 60 FPS? You are still gonna need two gpu's for quite some time. Slick says it is definitely playable on a single card though. Will prob buy it when my card comes later this week and give it a try with downsampling. 

 

[patrickjp93]

LTT did a benchmark of Mordor. The R9 290/970 can pretty much do a locked 30FPS at 4k. 60 FPS? You are still gonna need two gpu's for quite some time. Slick says it is definitely playable on a single card though. Will prob buy it when my card comes later this week and give it a try with downsampling. 

The 390x and 980TI will be the end of needing more than 1 single-gpu card for high-end single-monitor 4K gaming.

[Excon]

Free performance is exactly what overclocking is.

 

In many situations a couple fps won't make a difference, but sometimes you'll want that couple extra fps to keep you dipping to58 or 59 fps to, hopefully, reach 60 or over.

I will give you life my life savings if you can tell me the difference between 58, 59 and 60 fps

[deathjester]

The 390x and 980TI will be the end of needing more than 1 single-gpu card for high-end single-monitor 4K gaming.

 

You really think they are going to double the power of the GTX 980 and 290x? Well that is very optimistic of you.

 

I hope it happens, but I don't think that is very likely.  Even a 30 percent gain which  would be awesome won't get us close to 60 FPS on a single card in these games.

[patrickjp93]

You really think they are going to double the power of the GTX 980 and 290x? Well that is very optimistic of you.

 

I hope it happens, but I don't think that is very likely.  Even a 30 percent gain which  would be awesome won't get us close to 60 FPS on a single card in these games.

You don't need to double them. The 290x already holds between 45 and 55 fps in most games, and the 980 is dead even with it on release drivers. 1.3x performance over the current is fine.

[Bloodkil933]

Well I bagged a 2nd 290 for £150, so i'm a happy bunny.

[xtroria]

THE PRICE WAR IS ALIVE!

 

HIGH-END GPU FOR YOU AND FOR YOU AND FOR YOU! HIGH-END GPU FOR EVERYONE!

 

On a more serious note, i love this. A super super healthy technology rivalry right here

[DaMagicalManiac]

I will give you life my life savings if you can tell me the difference between 58, 59 and 60 fps

Dipping below 60 fps is noticeable, now give me your life savings.

[Haplo]

Fuck me. I got the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X like 2 months ago. Ugh.

[Excon]

Dipping below 60 fps is noticeable, now give me your life savings.

Thats not what I said

[deathjester]

Fuck me. I got the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X like 2 months ago. Ugh.

 

Grabbed one for 289.99 on Newegg. Had planned to get a 970, but the price was right, and 970's are nowhere to be found. Read all the reviews and people seemed to love it. Should be here tomorrow

 

How you like the card? 

[Haplo]

Grabbed one for 289.99 on Newegg. Had planned to get a 970, but the price was right, and 970's are nowhere to be found. Read all the reviews and people seemed to love it. Should be here tomorrow

 

How you like the card? 

 

I like it but I payed $430 for it ($369.99 + tax). There was an issue with the flash that was driving me up the wall where it'd randomly just turn black and the only fix was a restarted. I disabled Link State Power Management (under PCI Express in power option of Windows 7) and it seems to have fixed it. It works fine. Just bummed out it esentially got halved in price in 2 months.

 

I haven't gotten a chance to check out mantel yet though. Then again, it probably wouldn't have a massive advantage on my PC as I'm running a 4770k.

[KungPaoChino]

I'll wait for the new gen cards... Not going to fall for the price drops.

[deathjester]

I like it but I payed $430 for it ($369.99 + tax). There was an issue with the flash that was driving me up the wall where it'd randomly just turn black and the only fix was a restarted. I disabled Link State Power Management (under PCI Express in power option of Windows 7) and it seems to have fixed it. It works fine. Just bummed out it esentially got halved in price in 2 months.

 

I haven't gotten a chance to check out mantel yet though. Then again, it probably wouldn't have a massive advantage on my PC as I'm running a 4770k.

 

. Yeah it has always been like this with video cards. The drops come and it is just like damn. I am sure some people bought 3GB 780ti's right before this happened and were like wtf...

[The Crazed Child]

This is great, it makes 4K gaming more accessible to people without loads of money. I would snatch two of those 290s if I hadn't upgraded to a 280X 2 months ago.