Powercolor r9 290

othertomperson · September 20, 2015

Amd took an interesting aproach with their last series, the 390 is a better 290 with more RAM, but the launching price was 320 bucks, for the 290 it was 400. So, simply put, at the moment of launch, the 290 and 290X were enthusiast class GPUs, now the 390 and 390X are high end, with HBM GPUs being the enthusiast class. Nvidia moves the last 2 digits down from gen to gen (680=770) AMD went more massive and basically you can expect that analogy from the entire R9 300 series. I think their marketing wasn't very good, since people assumed that they were selling the 390 as a 290 replacement, when it was a 290X replacement, with the Fury replacing the 290X. So overall i'd say AMD's offering are pretty compelling, just misunderstood.

I can't think of a less interesting approach than renaming a 290X a 390X, renaming a 290 as a 390, renaming a 285 a 380, renaming a 7850 a 370...

The price went down from the original launch price, sure, but since those cards were approaching their second anniversary their retail price had already fallen so much that the rebrand was a price hike in real terms -- the 290 hadn't been sold at the 390 launch price for a very long time.

Putting 8GB on a 290 does not make it more compelling, 4GB was all any number of those cards in crossfire could really utilise unless you went particularly crazy with Skyrim.

I've ranted about Nvidia's habit of rebadging their x70 tier card in the past. Renaming an entire generation and relying on what they claimed was the equivalent to Titans takes the piss, frankly.