R9 290 Delayed Due to Driver Improvements (Competes with 780?)

NickJames

NickJames

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http://www.techpowerup.com/193497/radeon-r9-290-non-x-launch-pushed-back-a-week.html

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.
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Interesting..
 
damn this just gets better every day...I'm going to hold off on upgrading until I see what the 290 brings to the table...this has the potential to be the best price/performance card ever

great times for video card enthusiasts...AMD strikes...Nvidia responds with price cuts and card refreshes...now AMD strikes back with a new card with souped up drivers...exciting times indeed
 
Or its something like this.....
Weve been hosed by nvidia's new prices.
Hold the 290 until we sell all the 290X and come up with
Some whoop-ass to make this thing better.

The statement above makes no sense.
The X uses the same driver and is essentially the same card. So why didnt this magical driver already appear for the X?
 
The 290 is a gimped 290x that couldnt cut it. They are having issues with yields on the 290x, and most likely having issues getting them up to speed on the 290 as well.

If anyone believes its for driver improvements, well, maybe you are the dull tool in the shed.
 
doz said:
If anyone believes its for driver improvements, well, maybe you are the dull tool in the shed.
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did you miss this part:--- AMD pushed this driver onto reviewers at the last minute, and asked them to re-bench their R9 290 samples from scratch
 
If both cards receive increases in performance that'll be NICE!

290 vs. 780
290x vs. 780ti & Titan?

(At 1080 Res anyways, higher Res already is pretty much a 290x sweep)
with everything happening around this product launch in phases, I wouldn't be surprised if AMD kept some "reserve" performance for a response scenario, like this.
 
doz said:
The 290 is a gimped 290x that couldnt cut it. They are having issues with yields on the 290x, and most likely having issues getting them up to speed on the 290 as well.

If anyone believes its for driver improvements, well, maybe you are the dull tool in the shed.
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Why would AMD release updated drivers, request a re-bench, and extend NDA if there are no performance benefits to be gained?

Looking forward to the 290 [H] review!
 
polonyc2 said:
did you miss this part:--- AMD pushed this driver onto reviewers at the last minute, and asked them to re-bench their R9 290 samples from scratch
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Again, do you really believe that? Its already out in the wild that the cards are in short supply and manufacturers wont be able to put out non-reference cards till December....
 
doz said:
Again, do you really believe that? Its already out in the wild that the cards are in short supply and manufacturers wont be able to put out non-reference cards till December....
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what's not to believe??...they pushed out a new driver and asked reviewers to re-bench...they wouldn't have done that if they didn't think that the new drivers would offer significant improvement...a 1 week delay on the 290 is not a big deal...if they aren't available in force until December it still doesn't take away from the performance
 
Meanwhile, 290x are still OOS and hard to come by. 290 will be fully stocked in a week with super drivers.

Ok.... Would you like to buy some dust repellent for all your electronics?
 
doz said:
Meanwhile, 290x are still OOS and hard to come by. 290 will be fully stocked in a week with super drivers.

Ok.... Would you like to buy some dust repellent for all your electronics?
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You don't fix supply side issues in 5 days, not sure why its hard to accept the driver statement.
 
doz said:
Again, do you really believe that? Its already out in the wild that the cards are in short supply and manufacturers wont be able to put out non-reference cards till December....
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You don't think reviewers will call them out if they lied about pushing a new driver on them? Kyle and Brent would rip then a new so large you'd easily fit in it.
 
Im not saying at all that there isnt a new driver. I 100% believe that there is a new driver that adds performance.

I also believe that the driver is not the reason for the delay. I never said there wasnt a new driver.
 
Any driver improvements made to the 290 architecture would affect the 290X as well - they are the same core. So, I don't know whether or not to believe this, but it would be great if AMD had new drivers the boosted both cards.
 
Magic driver sounds lame to me.

If said driver was available dont you think AMD would want X owners to have it now?
 
I'm going to be pissed as fuck if the 290x doesn't get these magic boost drivers and beats the 290 by a considerable margin. Just bout one 15 hrs ago.
 
magoo said:
Magic driver sounds lame to me.

If said driver was available dont you think AMD would want X owners to have it now?
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Maybe, maybe not. But early adopters depend a lot on release date reviews. If there's a considerable performance boost it would make sense that they want reviews redone. We'll see when [H] releases its review, if the boost is negligible then AMD will catch a lot of flack for this.
 
magoo said:
Magic driver sounds lame to me.

If said driver was available dont you think AMD would want X owners to have it now?
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I don't remember if Nvidia has done it but AMD has given reviewers drivers before they were released to the public in the past. If I remember correctly they gave reviewers early access to the 7000 series performance drivers last year prior to them being released to consumers.
 
seems they just pushed it back to better position it against the now $499 780, not to mention the 780ti. any drivers that affect performance will also affect the 290X.
 
doz said:
The 290 is a gimped 290x that couldnt cut it. They are having issues with yields on the 290x, and most likely having issues getting them up to speed on the 290 as well.

If anyone believes its for driver improvements, well, maybe you are the dull tool in the shed.
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The 290's have already been delivered to retailers. Gibbo in Overclockers UK confirmed that they have received 1000's of them. So its not a stock issue.
 
This is interesting. According to the leaked benchmarks the 290 was already a couple percent faster than the 780.

Also, I receive daily updates from insiders at TSMC and I can assure you yields on the 290X are fine. They've already sold thousands.
 
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.
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Poor Brent... probably not getting any sleep.
 
PureBlackFire said:
seems they just pushed it back to better position it against the now $499 780, not to mention the 780ti. any drivers that affect performance will also affect the 290X.
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Yeah, I think that's the more likely scenario unless they really are trying to do dumb mustache-twirling supply holdbacks to boost 290x sales, which is unlikely given just a week's delay. I wouldn't be surprised if there are internal discussions going on right now about setting the 290's debut price to $399 or $429, if just to completely steal the $500 GTX 780's thunder all over again.
 
Shame that they had to push it back, but at least we will get a better indication of where the card is performance wise in initial reviews. Hopefully a few 290x benchmarks get redone with the new drivers for comparison.
 
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Brent_Justice said:
won't make a difference on 290X

cannot tell you why, answer will be in the launch eval, but no re-testing is needed on 290X

also, the driver is already public, it's the V8 driver which was posted today, so the driver is completely public

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx
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So this post pretty much shows that the reason for the delay is exactly why AMD delayed the release, and that everyone in this thread that is arguing otherwise don't know what they are talking about. Considering the people arguing that AMD is lying are also Nvidia fanbois, them not knowing what they are talking about is nothing new though.
 
Thats funny... I love how you tools throw out the fanboy talk whenever something goes against your color. Ive owned a 4870, 5850, 6970, 7970 (couple actually). Now I have a GTX780 and Im a fan boy because I dont believe AMD's bullshit? Oh btw, I wouldve jumped on a R290x had they been in stock for BF4 (and the pre-order that never happened).
 
Falling Anvil said:
Yeah, I think that's the more likely scenario unless they really are trying to do dumb mustache-twirling supply holdbacks to boost 290x sales, which is unlikely given just a week's delay. I wouldn't be surprised if there are internal discussions going on right now about setting the 290's debut price to $399 or $429, if just to completely steal the $500 GTX 780's thunder all over again.
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They can't do this (IMO because I don't know all of AMD's product line or investments). If they make a loss on these cards sure it'll gain them plenty of brownie points, awesome rep and great publicity but when they show their q4 earnings to investors they will literally be screwed. There stock price (which is already a joke) will take even further.
 
It's probably PowerTune adjustments that allow the card to be clocked higher than before, which is why it wouldn't work on the 290X.
 
mobusta1 said:
They can't do this (IMO because I don't know all of AMD's product line or investments). If they make a loss on these cards sure it'll gain them plenty of brownie points, awesome rep and great publicity but when they show their q4 earnings to investors they will literally be screwed. There stock price (which is already a joke) will take even further.
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290x currently costs $550, correct?
290 should cost $100~150 less, if the past is any indication. So the price of 290 being somewhere in the range of $400~450 isn't that unrealistic.
 
HFBallad said:
290x currently costs $550, correct?
290 should cost $100~150 less, if the past is any indication. So the price of 290 being somewhere in the range of $400~450 isn't that unrealistic.
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Agreed, both the 5850 and 7950 were $100 less than the top end card at launch so $450 is my guess.
 
doz said:
Thats funny... I love how you tools throw out the fanboy talk whenever something goes against your color. Ive owned a 4870, 5850, 6970, 7970 (couple actually). Now I have a GTX780 and Im a fan boy because I dont believe AMD's bullshit? Oh btw, I wouldve jumped on a R290x had they been in stock for BF4 (and the pre-order that never happened).
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lol so far the only "tool" in this thread has been you. Everything you said has been wrong. How is it AMD's Bullshit when what they said has been proven right?

And how did the pre order not happen? Go on make up something for that too while you are at it.
 
Fooshnik said:
This is interesting. According to the leaked benchmarks the 290 was already a couple percent faster than the 780.

Also, I receive daily updates from insiders at TSMC and I can assure you yields on the 290X are fine. They've already sold thousands.
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its a good sign all cards sell out.
 
reaper12 said:
lol so far the only "tool" in this thread has been you. Everything you said has been wrong. How is it AMD's Bullshit when what they said has been proven right?

And how did the pre order not happen? Go on make up something for that too while you are at it.
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Please show me where in the United States of America an R9 290X that was available for "pre-order".....that means you could order the card with a downpayment or whatever BEFORE the card was released?

Yes, there were 290X available last Thursday, the release day, with BF4 included.
But we were NEVER able to order the 290X before launch day....In the US, from any vendor that I am familiar with.

Maybe pre-order means something different to you?

AMD stated at their Hawaii meeting the 290X would be available for pre-order on October 3......that never happened.
 
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