[Tweaktown] R9 290/x price cuts begin

There arent very many 970s in stock for MSRP, so it doesnt make much difference till there is.

Not to be captain obvious here, but the AMD marketing dept are a lot more knowledgeable about this stuff then we are.

They priced the 290/290x where they thought appropriate.
 
In my opinion if the 290x is trading blows with the GTX 970 then it should be the same price or less to be competitive. Not $70 more.
 
Nuby1Canuby said:
In my opinion if the 290x is trading blows with the GTX 970 then it should be the same price or less to be competitive. Not $70 more.
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That's the thing - technically it's not THAT much more. I got a MSI Gaming 4G edition, which has a nice OC, and lots of upgraded premium components on the custom PCB, so it was more expensive. $350. I saw a HIS IceQ R9-290X for $360 after rebate. If you were going to buy Alien:Isolation or Star Citizen anyway, it turns out to be cheaper.

So, I don't think the pricing is BAD or anything. It's close enough that you have to consider stuff like Mantle vs PhysX, slightly better 4k performance for AMD but at the cost of significantly higher power draw, more OC headroom with the 970, etc...

For me, with power draw and noise being things I care about, the Nvidia was the clear winner this time around. But at such close prices, the 290X is a very reasonable choice for someone who, for example, lives inside BF4 running at 4k.

Basically, I think AMD got it close enough.
 
They didnt use mantle in that review, even with a high end cpu, 290x wins with mantle at 4k in BF4.
 
limitedaccess said:
You can actually download youtube videos directly. There's even browser plugins or phone/tablet apps that make it rather simple to do.
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Yep, I'm aware of that. Just thought it was funny the first time I was watching a full screen video and noticed the shadowplay button in the bottom corner. Tried it out and it worked rather well. You don't really hear of shadowplay used outside of games, so I just thought I would share. It's not the best/easiest way to record/download videos, but it does work.
 
The Mac said:
Not to be captain obvious here, but the AMD marketing dept are a lot more knowledgeable about this stuff then we are.
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Which is something amd shills will say. If anything, amd's marketing team can be quite clueless at times (cough roy cough).

PRIME1 said:
970 wins on BF4 @ 4K

http://techreport.com/review/27067/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-and-970-graphics-cards-reviewed/9
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290x with mantle would probably win vs a 970 at 4k. I can't find any benchmarks to prove it though.
 
Would it matter if the 290x was faster w/mantle, if its not truly stable using it?
I read somewhere here on [H] that most users were using DX11 in BF4 because of issues with RAM filling up and causing the game to crash. I'm not sure if that is an issue now, or maybe it was just fud.
 
DraginDime said:
Would it matter if the 290x was faster w/mantle, if its not truly stable using it?
I read somewhere here on [H] that most users were using DX11 in BF4 because of issues with RAM filling up and causing the game to crash. I'm not sure if that is an issue now, or maybe it was just fud.
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Yeah, a good chunk of users have issues running bf4 with mantle. I never gave it a try, so I can't comment on it. It did ran perfectly smooth under dx11.
 
I can guarantee a great majority of people have no problems with mantle in bf4.

People who dont have issues, dont post.
 
The Mac said:
I can guarantee a great majority of people have no problems with mantle in bf4.

People who dont have issues, dont post.
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I dunno about that. Here is what I'll say about that topic. I think most if not everyone is having issues with Mantle in BF4 but only after this recent July Patch that seems to have broken it. There is a well documented memory leak. For some its more noticeable than others becasue they can tell the difference between 90 fps then and 48.fps now. Or simply they were monitoring all this time and can see the difference in the on screen display.

Before that patch Mantle was working flawlessly for months. So I'd say dice screwed it up not AMD and it's not mantle's fault it's something the patch dev team did or didn't do to ensure it works correctly. Go to their forum and check out the threads on this.

With that said, I don't think it's fair to say mantle as a whole is a failure since this is something not caused by mantle in itself but by sloppy coding or programming by dice.

I do agree that people who dont have problems never go on a forum and say "Hey I just wanted to post that everything is running fine" LOL

You will always hear more problems than good feedback. That's 100% true.
 
The Mac said:
They didnt use mantle in that review, even with a high end cpu, 290x wins with mantle at 4k in BF4.
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[H] used Mantle in their review and GTX 970 was still neck and neck with 290X. So I am not sure why you are so vehemently defending the 290X. Does it have a soft corner in your heart or are you failing to see a better product at a lower price point.

One should not pay more than 299$ for a 290X.
 
madgun said:
[H] used Mantle in their review and GTX 970 was still neck and neck with 290X. So I am not sure why you are so vehemently defending the 290X. Does it have a soft corner in your heart or are you failing to see a better product at a lower price point.

One should not pay more than 299$ for a 290X.
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I thought they tested it against the 290, not the 290X. And it was well ahead of the 290, as I recall.
 
um, those are not 4K.

I was specifically referring to 4K, which someone claimed the 290x loses.

it doesnt.
 
290X is only 3% faster overall at 4K. I would call it neck and neck.

And with the 970 GTX reaching 1500 Mhz without too much voltage bump, is going to widen the performance gap between the two GPUs. I havent seen 290X going above 1200 Mhz on air without getting insanely loud or hot.

So the price delta still doesn't justify a 290X. It is obsolete as it is with the current pricing.
 
a higher OC doesn't necessarily equate to higher relative performance.

A card can OC to the bejesus and still not be faster than one lower clocked.

I never understood peoples obsession with high OCs.

The only thing that matters is RELATIVE performance at the highest OC possible on BOTH cards.
 
The Mac said:
a higher OC doesn't necessarily equate to higher relative performance.

A card can OC to the bejesus and still not be faster than one lower clocked.

I never understood peoples obsession with high OCs.

The only thing that matters is RELATIVE performance at the highest OC possible on BOTH cards.
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I am personally talking from experience, having come from two 290Xs overclocked at 1150 / 5.6Ghz.

These get toasted by 2 x 970 GTXs running at 1510 / 7.6Ghz by a good 20%. That is a huge performance delta in my view. And the gains are across most of the games/benchmarks I ran.

I also have a 980 GTX Sli rig running at 1550 / 7.8 Ghz and that is worlds apart from the 290X crossfire.
 
EDIT: Looks like AMD's CEO just quit. I guess I was right.
 
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PRIME1 said:
q5L4Wxc.gif
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Nvidia needs to step their game up if a GTX 980 can only score 35 fps at 640x480..
 
madgun said:
290X is only 3% faster overall at 4K. I would call it neck and neck.

And with the 970 GTX reaching 1500 Mhz without too much voltage bump, is going to widen the performance gap between the two GPUs. I havent seen 290X going above 1200 Mhz on air without getting insanely loud or hot.

So the price delta still doesn't justify a 290X. It is obsolete as it is with the current pricing.
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Well Nvidia had so many months can they beat 4K score?.
Maybe next year :) .
 
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