More R9 290X details, NDA lifts October 15th

I thought AMD officially claimed it the new single fastest card? With no actual proof of course but if their claim is true, even by a couple percent, and it is priced about $700 then nVidia either has to cut the titan pricing, which wouldn't be hard, or come out with something faster, or both I'm thinking. A lot of what ifs.
 
I thought AMD officially claimed it the new single fastest card? With no actual proof of course but if their claim is true, even by a couple percent, and it is priced about $700 then nVidia either has to cut the titan pricing, which wouldn't be hard, or come out with something faster, or both I'm thinking. A lot of what ifs.

Or not, since the Titan isn't really catering to gamers right now, and any gamer that isn't epeening or actually using the non gaming benefits of the Titan would buy a 780 instead. This is why the Titan comparisons make no sense. No one right now that's actually buying a gaming card would compare it to the Titan and say "It's 100% of the performance for 65% of the price" and get a massive boner, they're going to compare it to 780s and say "It's 110% of the performance for 110% of the price" (or whatever the numbers end up being) and remain mostly flaccid. Maybe it ends up being 120% of the performance for 110% of the price and they get a lackluster semi, but that may be it. Or hell, maybe it gets 130% of the performance for 90% of the price, and they do get a rager, regardless, the Titan doesn't, or at least shouldn't, enter the picture.
 
Or not, since the Titan isn't really catering to gamers right now, and any gamer that isn't epeening or actually using the non gaming benefits of the Titan would buy a 780 instead. This is why the Titan comparisons make no sense. No one right now that's actually buying a gaming card would compare it to the Titan and say "It's 100% of the performance for 65% of the price" and get a massive boner, they're going to compare it to 780s and say "It's 110% of the performance for 110% of the price" (or whatever the numbers end up being) and remain mostly flaccid. Maybe it ends up being 120% of the performance for 110% of the price and they get a lackluster semi, but that may be it. Or hell, maybe it gets 130% of the performance for 90% of the price, and they do get a rager, regardless, the Titan doesn't, or at least shouldn't, enter the picture.

Plenty of gamers are using Titans. And they are still selling.
 
I thought AMD officially claimed it the new single fastest card? With no actual proof of course but if their claim is true, even by a couple percent, and it is priced about $700 then nVidia either has to cut the titan pricing, which wouldn't be hard, or come out with something faster, or both I'm thinking. A lot of what ifs.

No, they said it was the fastest GPU they've ever made.
 
Or not, since the Titan isn't really catering to gamers right now, and any gamer that isn't epeening or actually using the non gaming benefits of the Titan would buy a 780 instead. This is why the Titan comparisons make no sense. No one right now that's actually buying a gaming card would compare it to the Titan and say "It's 100% of the performance for 65% of the price" and get a massive boner, they're going to compare it to 780s and say "It's 110% of the performance for 110% of the price" (or whatever the numbers end up being) and remain mostly flaccid. Maybe it ends up being 120% of the performance for 110% of the price and they get a lackluster semi, but that may be it. Or hell, maybe it gets 130% of the performance for 90% of the price, and they do get a rager, regardless, the Titan doesn't, or at least shouldn't, enter the picture.

Quoted for truth.
 
if its over 650 ill just go buy a used 780. Cooler is better anyway

^This. With the stock blower it would have to wipe the floor with the 780 (forget Titan, it's perf/$ is a joke) to be worth $100 more. So far the leaks don't show enough performance increase to justify anything more than ~$600.
 
Which is why you don't just sit around doing nothing waiting to be beaten...

In Nvidia's case, they've been working on Maxwell this entire time.

You completely missed the point. I assume it was on purpose. If you've designed something better than Titan, it cost you heaps to design. If you just let it sit on the shelf you get zero ROI for it. If in the meantime your competition surpasses you, you have no choice but to either do nothing, or release a lower performance answer when you could have instead been dominating your competition with the part you thought was so rocking that you just left it on a shelf somewhere collecting dust.

Companies make the decision to hold back on the release of higher-performance parts all the time...

Give me applicable examples. Without that this is just rhetoric

Releasing an intentionally gimped version of a product allows them to up-sell their customers on the better version at a later date. Very common tactic when you're comfortably in the lead (just don't shut down your R&D department, you WILL eventually need an actual new design)

Oh, must have been the strategy with the 780 being released before Titan... Oh wait?

Guess Intel's CEO better look out for his walking papers. They could easily release chips that crush AMD far worse than their existing lineup already does, but they haven't bothered.

Again, rhetoric unless you have a source for Intel not releasing the best products they can.


Yeah, hopefully that's not the MSRP. Looks horrendous compared to a GTX 780.

At $749 it's skirting Titan pricing, I hope it has the compute performance to match...

No where near Titan's price which would be a full 33% higher. And not 33% of a small figure. I do agree that it is too high though. Assuming leaks are correct and it's slightly faster than Titan, $600 maximum. That price is only justifiable relative to the current market and competition, which I think is too high, as well.

Compute performance is yet to be determined. I assume you are talking DP. Without ECC and support for professional apps. though, it's not worth much considering 99.9% of consumers have zero use for it.

3ch
 
The world of GPUs according to Unknown-One.

Jan 9, 2012
AMD releases the base 7970
"Omg, it took AMD 13 months to beat a GTX580."

Mar 22, 2012
NVidia releases GTX 680, 2 months after 7970 released
"NVidia is the greatest! It beats the 7970 in performance, price, and good looks!"

Jun 22, 2012
AMD releases 7970 GHz Edition, 3 months after GTX 680 released
"It took AMD 3 months just to release a card that beats/matches the GTX 680. NVidia still the greatest company."

May 23, 2013
NVidia releases GTX 780, 11 months after 7970 GHz Edition released
"NVidia wins the crown again! Fastest card everrr!"

October 2013
Rumors of AMD's R9 290X faster the GTX 780, 5 months after GTX780 released
"Omg, it took AMD so long to beat NVidia. Their engineers are awful."
 
I am just going to say this now. This flaming and fanboism has to stop! Seriously people I am more then happy to see AMD/ATI come out with a great product. It makes NVIDIA have to keep up and not stay stagnant. In the end competition is a winner for the consumer.
 
The world of GPUs according to Unknown-One.

Jan 9, 2012
AMD releases the base 7970
"Omg, it took AMD 13 months to beat a GTX580."

Mar 22, 2012
NVidia releases GTX 680, 2 months after 7970 released
"NVidia is the greatest! It beats the 7970 in performance, price, and good looks!"

Jun 22, 2012
AMD releases 7970 GHz Edition, 3 months after GTX 680 released
"It took AMD 3 months just to release a card that beats/matches the GTX 680. NVidia still the greatest company."

May 23, 2013
NVidia releases GTX 780, 11 months after 7970 GHz Edition released
"NVidia wins the crown again! Fastest card everrr!"

October 2013
Rumors of AMD's R9 290X faster the GTX 780, 5 months after GTX780 released
"Omg, it took AMD so long to beat NVidia. Their engineers are awful."

Might as well add GoldenTiger to that too....
 
I wonder if the new marketing strategy for AMD/Nvidia is going to be

"produce a single ferrari of video card each generation that only the top 0.1% enthusiast will buy, and rake in the publicity for the lower priced cards".

The fact that only 8000 units are available (yes, I know it's the "BF4 edition", but, really... how is that different from buying a card and then heading over to Origin?) kind of makes me wonder if AMD really plans on selling many of those cards.
 
I wonder if the new marketing strategy for AMD/Nvidia is going to be

"produce a single ferrari of video card each generation that only the top 0.1% enthusiast will buy, and rake in the publicity for the lower priced cards".

The fact that only 8000 units are available (yes, I know it's the "BF4 edition", but, really... how is that different from buying a card and then heading over to Origin?) kind of makes me wonder if AMD really plans on selling many of those cards.

Its just an artificial limit so they can increase the price. People are more willing to spend the cash on a limited model because they think they are one of an elite few.
 
I wonder if the new marketing strategy for AMD/Nvidia is going to be

AMD's pre-release marketing strategy for this generation is working on me. i'm ready to pull the trigger on a 780 but AMD's lack of info on the R9 cards has me hesitant and curious. their launch strategy is working exactly as intended on me.
 
AMD's pre-release marketing strategy for this generation is working on me. i'm ready to pull the trigger on a 780 but AMD's lack of info on the R9 cards has me hesitant and curious. their launch strategy is working exactly as intended on me.

It almost worked on me... but not quite. The lack of info and the low 3dmark firestrike extreme + low oc'ing potential being reported, made me wary, along with the obscene rumored price of $729. I actually ended up ordering a 780 classy with the 15% off and some eVGA bucks, but am unsure whether I'll keep it or just send it back unopened, since I'd lose some performance over my 670 4gb sli even if it clocks well, and it'll run me ~$100 more than my 670 4gb sli did :(, at around $590 + shipping (5 minimum but I splurged for 2-day which upped it a little more). AMD tends to be unable to charge the pricing nvidia does and still sell well at this point due to branding among most gamers... even if they lanuched the card at 599 instead of $729 nVidia could sit pretty with the 780 @ the current 649, or really put the screws down by tossing it to 600 for the reference model.

But yeah... 3dmark firestrike extreme is coming in at 4500 reportedly for the graphics score. An OC'd 780 can pull 6000 graphics score. The R9 290X is purportedly only able to get up to 1350-1400ish with LN2 cooling and barely anywhere on air, from a stock clock of 1050, meaning there isn't much room for it to climb. Good stock performance, but not that impressive at a much higher price and coming out many months later, combined with continuing crossfire issues. If AMD has a winner up their sleeve somehow and all these leaks are completely bunk, they shot themselves in the foot letting it look like they had nothing truly good coming.

Frankly I've been disappointed in the pace of improvements from BOTH camps lately... I remember back in the 90's where each card was pretty much double the last one, which seemed to end with the cards after the nVidia 8800 GTX :(. Whatever I end up keeping, I'm going to probably ride it out for awhile until there's a real gain to be had... 10% just isn't that exciting for hundreds of bucks when it doesn't even result in higher settings, and your framerate is already capped at 2560x1440 100-120hz. 4K is an extreme right now that is just starting out... once that becomes any kind of mainstream, I'll be clawing for every bit of performance I can get again I'm sure :D.
 
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It almost worked on me... but not quite. The lack of info and the low 3dmark firestrike extreme + low oc'ing potential being reported, made me wary, along with the obscene rumored price of $729. I actually ended up ordering a 780 classy with the 15% off and some eVGA bucks, but am unsure whether I'll keep it or just send it back unopened, since I'd lose some performance over my 670 4gb sli even if it clocks well, and it'll run me ~$100 more than my 670 4gb sli did :(, at around $590 + shipping (5 minimum but I splurged for 2-day which upped it a little more). AMD tends to be unable to charge the pricing nvidia does and still sell well at this point due to branding among most gamers... even if they lanuched the card at 599 instead of $729 nVidia could sit pretty with the 780 @ the current 649, or really put the screws down by tossing it to 600 for the reference model.

But yeah... 3dmark firestrike extreme is coming in at 4500 reportedly for the graphics score. An OC'd 780 can pull 6000 graphics score. The R9 290X is purportedly only able to get up to 1350-1400ish with LN2 cooling and barely anywhere on air, from a stock clock of 1050, meaning there isn't much room for it to climb. Good stock performance, but not that impressive at a much higher price and coming out many months later, combined with continuing crossfire issues. If AMD has a winner up their sleeve somehow and all these leaks are completely bunk, they shot themselves in the foot letting it look like they had nothing truly good coming.

Frankly I've been disappointed in the pace of improvements from BOTH camps lately... I remember back in the 90's where each card was pretty much double the last one, which seemed to end with the cards after the nVidia 8800 GTX :(. Whatever I end up keeping, I'm going to probably ride it out for awhile until there's a real gain to be had... 10% just isn't that exciting for hundreds of bucks when it doesn't even result in higher settings, and your framerate is already capped at 2560x1440 100-120hz. 4K is an extreme right now that is just starting out... once that becomes any kind of mainstream, I'll be clawing for every bit of performance I can get again I'm sure :D.

I agree 4k gaming is coming soon. Nvidia and AMD have to get us more powerful cards to support that. Shit its already hard enough trying to get 1440p 120hz at a constant framerate (I couldn't even do it with 2x780's).

I am hoping the 290x can get closer to that goal. I am also interested in bridgeless crossfire...I am hoping crossfire will be near 100% scaling then. I am also interested to see if the 290x have hardware built frame pacing.

1 more week to go to find out which camp im going!
 
I agree 4k gaming is coming soon. Nvidia and AMD have to get us more powerful cards to support that. Shit its already hard enough trying to get 1440p 120hz at a constant framerate (I couldn't even do it with 2x780's).

I am hoping the 290x can get closer to that goal. I am also interested in bridgeless crossfire...I am hoping crossfire will be near 100% scaling then. I am also interested to see if the 290x have hardware built frame pacing.

1 more week to go to find out which camp im going!

4k gaming is coming to 0.01% of the population soon.
 
I agree 4k gaming is coming soon. Nvidia and AMD have to get us more powerful cards to support that. Shit its already hard enough trying to get 1440p 120hz at a constant framerate (I couldn't even do it with 2x780's).

I am hoping the 290x can get closer to that goal. I am also interested in bridgeless crossfire...I am hoping crossfire will be near 100% scaling then. I am also interested to see if the 290x have hardware built frame pacing.

1 more week to go to find out which camp im going!

Agreed on all counts. Definitely would be great to hear that they got hardware framepacing in... hopefully so! If not, I can't imagine their next cards after won't have it. I really want to see more gains on the graphics front (CPU's too, actually...) again.

4k gaming is coming to 0.01% of the population soon.

Eh, it'll be sub-$1k inside of a 12-18 months, in all likeliness. That will make it a viable option for enthusiasts, though indeed not many mass-market gamers are going to grab it at that kind of pricing even. It's almost a chicken-egg scenario... graphics horsepower won't advance in strides without a need, but there's no need unless 4k panels come down which happens with more production & popularity.
 
Agreed on all counts. Definitely would be great to hear that they got hardware framepacing in... hopefully so! If not, I can't imagine their next cards after won't have it. I really want to see more gains on the graphics front (CPU's too, actually...) again.



Eh, it'll be sub-$1k inside of a 12-18 months, in all likeliness. That will make it a viable option for enthusiasts, though indeed not many mass-market gamers are going to grab it at that kind of pricing even. It's almost a chicken-egg scenario... graphics horsepower won't advance in strides without a need, but there's no need unless 4k panels come down which happens with more production & popularity.

I would like to go 4k gaming, but being stuck at 60hz is a no go for me. Once I did 1080p 120hz, then 1440p 100hz. I can never go back to 60hz....

Hell trying to game on my media-pc on a 60inch tv drives me nut because im at stuck at 60hz lol.
 
I would like to go 4k gaming, but being stuck at 60hz is a no go for me. Once I did 1080p 120hz, then 1440p 100hz. I can never go back to 60hz....

Hell trying to game on my media-pc on a 60inch tv drives me nut because im at stuck at 60hz lol.

Yeah, I know what you mean... 4K res. might be enough to get me down the hz ladder some again though, particularly if we can get even 75-80hz out of it with future panels. I think we'll be waiting quite awhile for that though! I'm currently running 1440p, my panel can go 110-115hz but I generally turn it down to 96hz so that when the framerate dips it isn't as readily visible, and I can meet the refresh rate more easily.
 
I think 4k would be nice for a game like Skyrim or racing games. In most single player games I couldn't care less about Hz, it only matters to me in MP games. I think it would be nice if we could get great colors with 120-144Hz instead though.(Think lightboost with good colors, since it seems the colors are pretty shitty with it on).
 
I think 4k would be nice for a game like Skyrim or racing games. In most single player games I couldn't care less about Hz, it only matters to me in MP games. I think it would be nice if we could get great colors with 120-144Hz instead though.(Think lightboost with good colors, since it seems the colors are pretty shitty with it on).

You can. 1440p PLS monitors from Korea constantly hit between 100-120hz easily. I paid $290 for mine with a perfect pixel panel, and I paid $50 for an extra warrenty.

Colors are freakin fantasic...They blew away the Asus 120hz TN panel.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1758515
 
You can. 1440p PLS monitors from Korea constantly hit between 100-120hz easily. I paid $290 for mine with a perfect pixel panel, and I paid $50 for an extra warrenty.

Colors are freakin fantasic...They blew away the Asus 120hz TN panel.

Yep. It's not quite lightboost-level blur-free, but it's extremely good-looking, pretty much blur-free, smooth-as-lotion movement and responsiveness, with all of the benefits of an IPS/PLS panel (viewing angles, color depth & richness/reproduction, etc.).
 
You can. 1440p PLS monitors from Korea constantly hit between 100-120hz easily. I paid $290 for mine with a perfect pixel panel, and I paid $50 for an extra warrenty.

Colors are freakin fantasic...They blew away the Asus 120hz TN panel.

Yeah but they aren't going to touch it in the motion blur/response time department. I still think the best setup is to get one of the 144hz monitors with the lightboost and a second monitor being an IPS or PLS for colors. Just don't have the funds for it all right now :(

And my second HD 7950 doesn't fit on this stupid Gene V without scraping on the other one, so I wouldn't really be able to push 1440p right now
 
Yep. It's not quite lightboost-level blur-free, but it's extremely good-looking, pretty much blur-free, smooth-as-lotion movement and responsiveness, with all of the benefits of an IPS/PLS panel (viewing angles, color depth & richness/reproduction, etc.).

Very true, but its the best we can get right now.....
 
Unfortunately that .01% won't be able to fully enjoy the .01% of the games that are released supporting GPU PhysX. :D

If mantle works as advertised it's totally possible they will be able to enjoy it. All speculation of course.
 
I actually ended up ordering a 780 classy with the 15% off and some eVGA bucks, but am unsure whether I'll keep it or just send it back unopened.

this is my plan at the moment. if no concrete info is released on the R9 cards by thursday night i'll pull the trigger on the 780 classified and put it in a corner until NDA lifts.
 
MSI pricing sent to vendors in EU. this indicates that US prices should be $649 and $519 for 290X an 290 respectively.

MSI Radeon R9 290X R9-290X-4GD5 649 EUR
MSI Radeon R9 290 R9-290-4GD5 519 EUR

videocardz
 
$649 is looking better, would still like to see $600 though.

With these going for $649 I don't think it's likely we'll see Nvidia drop prices, either.
 
$649 is looking better, would still like to see $600 though.

With these going for $649 I don't think it's likely we'll see Nvidia drop prices, either.

649 looks pretty nice to me, but that list has the 280X at 279 when it has an MRSP of 299 :p
 
Um, guys.... that's 649 EURO and 519 EURO, not the good ol' greenbacks.
Now, I understand that there's a big markup when cards are sold in Europe (as opposed to the US), but, with the aid of Google.

649 Euro = $880
519 Euro = $704

*279Euro (for 280X that we know is $299 or therebouts) = $379

Yeah... I don't know how much of a mark up 290 and 290x are at compared to the US market, but... they're still going to be pretty expensive.
 
we're aware those prices are in EUR. in the past gpu prices have equated regardless of units. so $650 EUR over there indicates $650 over here.

edit: whoops my '$650 EUR' typo above makes no sense, but you get the point :D
 
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