TR Forums

"Radeon R9 290X hits Newegg.com at US $729.99"

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

http://fudzilla.com/home/item/32716-rad ... -us-$72999

.

If it launches at $699.99...ouch. Sure, it's probably going to be slightly faster than a 780, but AMD has to compete with the fact that many people can't stand dealing with their driver stack.

The link indicates the starting MSRP is $699. That's probably about $100 too much. I thought AMD would try to slightly undercut the GTX 780 - slightly higher performance at a slightly lower price, but instead launched at the same price the GTX 780 is now.

If the 280x really is a rebadged 7970 and will launch at $299, then this is obviously a much better value. But I suppose Nvidia has cemented the idea that flagship cards should be a ridiculous departure from the linear trend between price/performance represented by the rest of the model lineup. THis might also might suggest that the 280x is really a rebadged 7950? If so, may not be such a bad idea to grab an HD 7970/50 at their current prices if you aren't interested in the top tier card. (I've seen speculation that the 280x is likely to be a rebadge based on the 7970 or 7950 - not sure which is more likely at this point).

Well the 780 is sitting at $650, and that's after a couple months. If the performance difference is minimal, that makes it a hard sell, especially if Nvidia can cut prices.

Did y'all miss the 'Limited Edition' part of the listings?

This news makes $650 sound quite plausible for the standard cards.

clone wrote:

why is any of this funny?

it's a pre-release price, I'm still hoping for $650.00... or less.

It's overpriced by 200 dollars IMO. This is just obscene. The Tahiti launch was overpriced, and this is even more ridiculous. I understand that on paper maybe they are going to ship a card that could be marginally faster than the 780, but come on. A $700 GPU becoming a regular occurrence is not good for anybody.

Now we're being gouged by nvidia and AMD with $650 and $700 flagship cards. AMD used to be the good guy with competitive prices, now they're just as bad as nVidia.

I miss the AMD that released the 4870 for $299 1 week after the GTX 280 launched at $649 and the GTX 260 launched at $399. They delivered performance as good as the GTX 280 for $350 LESS. Now they're charging more for a card that is neck in neck with the 780? Give me a break.

Not to mention, they have to restore consumer confidence after being exposed for jittery, microstuttery, bad frametimey single gpu cards and crossfire is still broken on multi-screen setups. Their overall experience is not worth the price premium they are demanding at this point IMO

I was a very proud owner of the HD 4870, but all of my GPUs since have been nVidia. I wouldn't consider myself to be a fan of either company, I just go with what makes sense based on what's in my wallet and what I'm shooting for performance-wise.

To be fair, nvidia's flagship card still costs a thousand bucks...

NovusBogus wrote:

To be fair, nvidia's flagship card still costs a thousand bucks...

Flagship for what? The Titan isn't nearly as much as a top-end gaming card (even though it is) as much as it is a super-cheap entry level compute card. The GTX780 is the real 'flagship' consumer gaming GPU, in this sense.

Airmantharp wrote:

Waco wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

My concern with this card is that it's brute-forcing the lead with an expensive 512-bit design and physically huge GPU, rather than architectural or process improvements that increase performance/cost.

I'm not really concerned about the top SKU, that's for the 1% of people who are interested in performance, no matter the cost.
I'm interested in the sweet spot where you get 80% of the performance for 50% of the cost, and that's unlikely to be cheap given how large these dies are, and how 512-bit PCBs are likely to be more expensive to produce than 256-bit or 384-bit.

I'm having flashbacks to buying my 1 GB GDDR4 2900XT...for $550.

That's your own damn fault- anyone in the know knew better! :-p

I agree...even diehard ATi fans saw 2900XT as overpriced and underperforming.
Worst card they have produced since I started using ATi cards with 9600XT

.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/32674 ... -explained

it seems that the crossfire connector is no longer needed now because pcie 3 gives enough bandwidth for it all but i wonder what effect it will have on pcie 2 like i have on my board it would be a bummer if i hit bandwidth limit if i decided to buy 2 of em

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

"Radeon R9 290X hits Newegg.com at US $729.99"

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

http://fudzilla.com/home/item/32716-rad ... -us-$72999

Why i don't remember seeing HAHAHAHA from you when TITAN was launched at $999 ?

Am i missing something ? Do you have all the bench results of R9 290X, is it slower than $650 GTX 780 ?

Jigar wrote:

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

"Radeon R9 290X hits Newegg.com at US $729.99"

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

http://fudzilla.com/home/item/32716-rad ... -us-$72999

Why i don't remember seeing HAHAHAHA from you when TITAN was launched at $999 ?

Am i missing something ? Do you have all the bench results of R9 290X, is it slower than $650 GTX 780 ?

+

Fighterpilot wrote:

I agree...even diehard ATi fans saw 2900XT as overpriced and underperforming.
Worst card they have produced since I started using ATi cards with 9600XT

Yes, but this was the GDDR4 version. That was one more GDDR than the rest of them!

I admit, I had my red-colored glasses on at the time. I was hopeful that the drivers would be the savior of the card...

clone wrote:

you are forgetting Geforce 8800 ultra platinum's retailed for $830.00

Not forgetting, but it's not 2007 anymore. Prices dropped steadily over a couple of generations, and now they're massively inflated by both teams, red and green. NV was consistently seen to be the evil guy on the block, price gouging, and AMD was competing with great products that significantly undercut all things green pricewise.

- 4870 launched at $299
- 5870 launched at $379 but brought some amazing new features, first DX11 card, eyefinity, yada yada yada. Worth the price increase IMO.
- 7970 $550, marginally better than GTX 580 at launch ( +6 FPS in BF3, +7 in Crysis 2, +5 FPS in Skyrim, +6 FPS in CIV V although much improved with new drivers over the last 20 months), frame time roller coaster.
290x $700???

Houston, we have a problem.

AMD has gone green and is overpricing their cards like one could argue nvidia always has. This is not good for anybody who wants to buy a GPU. Yes, you could argue it's good for pushing prices down on current cards, but GCN is almost 2 years old and a new console gen is launching that will push up the minimum requirements of games across the board. Ain't nobody got time fo' dat.

.

clone wrote:

given the word is the card will be faster while costing 35% less I can't agree with this quote, their is a high end market for video cards, I may or may not buy into it but it does exist and it carries a price premium. AMD undercutting that premium by 25% to 35% is a good thing not a bad, I don't understand why the expectations are on AMD to undercut Nvidia by 25% to 35% while also producing superior product..... it's unrealistic and more than a little flawed.

They set the precedent themselves...that's how they got such huge market share back in the 4870 days.

clone wrote:

Nvidia's high end is $1000, AMD's might be faster and looks to be at worst selling for 25% less to possibly 35% less..... it's not funny and given 35% less is still $650 it's not cheap either.

AMD has gone green and is overpricing their cards like one could argue nvidia always has.

given the word is the card will be faster while costing 35% less I can't agree with this quote, their is a high end market for video cards, I may or may not buy into it but it does exist and it carries a price premium. AMD undercutting that premium by 25% to 35% is a good thing not a bad, I don't understand why the expectations are on AMD to undercut Nvidia by 25% to 35% while also producing superior product..... it's unrealistic and more than a little flawed.

This is where I disagree. The market offerings we saw in 2012 defined the GTX 680 as nVidia's high end alongside the 7970. Then they proactively binned some chips to sell the 780 at a lower price point knowing Hawaii was on the way, priced at $650 because, as TR put it, it's "Titan on a diet."

In an alternate universe, maybe the Titan could have been the GTX 680 and sold for less. But since the GK104 was good enough to compete with GCN, that's what they gave us. Knowing there was no competition to Titan's single-chip performance, they branded it as an ultra high end special edition and milked the enthusiasts with more money than sense.

AMD gouged us with the Tahiti launch price, Nvidia gouged us by selling GK104 in the price range of a high-end card because it could get away with it, launched Titan at a ridiculous price and now we've come full circle and AMD is launching their card at nearly twice of what the HD 5870 launched at.

A new product should replace the previous top product in the same price range, not inflate it's prices just because it's faster than the previous generation.

AMD won my purchase and my respect in 2008 by shaking up the market. But now they're asking for too much and making the market worse. I know nvidia is very much guilty of this as well, but their prices have been high as long as I can remember.

They lost 2 potential 7970 or 7950 purchases from me, I have 2 rigs with a GTX 670 in them, one purchased for $400 in 2012 and another for $280 in January 2013. I passed on Tahiti and now I'll definitely be passing on Hawaii if this pricing holds.

Anyway, they need to stop comparing the 290x to Titan. Titan is not their competition. The GTX 780 is. It's every bit as fast as the Titan in games, sometimes faster as they overclock better and have better customized coolers shipping from many AIB vendors, whereas nvidia is enforcing the stock cooler on all air-cooled Titans.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

clone wrote:

AMD gouged us with the Tahiti launch price, Nvidia gouged us by selling GK104 in the price range of a high-end card because it could get away with it, launched Titan at a ridiculous price and now we've come full circle and AMD is launching their card at nearly twice of what the HD 5870 launched at.

A new product should replace the previous top product in the same price range, not inflate it's prices just because it's faster than the previous generation.

AMD only gouged with the HD 7970, because it didn't sell for $370 like the HD 6970 launched at. The fact of the matter was that the HD 7970 was somewhere around 40% or more faster than the hd 6970. And 20% faster than the GTX 580 that was being sold for $500 at the time. Your argument that just because Nvidia didn't increases prices between the GTX 480 and GTX 580 (even though the GTX 580 ended up selling for a bit more retail), it was fine for the GTX 580 to cost >$500 before the HD 7970 was released. This is a logical perspective for someone who only buys AMD or only buys Nvidia, but in reality, these brands coexist in the same market.

In 2008, AMD was desperate for market share, so they released their new HD 4000 architecture as somewhat of a loss leader to claw back market share. Sure this made their cards exceptionally good value compared to Nvidia at the time, but such a move is risky, as it entrenches future similar products as being worth less in the eyes of the public. This probably explains some of the reason why AMD cards that perform as well as Nvidia cards (ie HD 7970 vs GTX 480) would only sell when priced $50-$100 less, even today.

Bottom line is that pricing of a product, relative to other existing products, all else being equal, is a strong factor by which people valuate them. It's a critical mass thing. AMD's bargain basement pricing of the HD 4800 cards was a long-term marketing tactic: Claw back market share, then eventually be able to sell future generations at market parity. Any other strategy is just not realistic for a business.

This is all to say that if the R9 290x really does perform as well or better than a GTX 780, then why shouldn't it sell for approximately as much. I think, due to AMD's recent reputation and market share, it would behoove them to attempt to at least slightly undercut GTX 780 prices ( and t's still too early to say that this isn't the case), but calling their top cards overpriced because they don't sell for $299 (HD 4870 launch price) is not really a perspective that is based on reality.

cynan wrote:

Your argument that just because Nvidia didn't increases prices between the GTX 480 and GTX 580 (even though the GTX 580 ended up selling for a bit more retail), it was fine for the GTX 580 to cost >$500 before the HD 7970 was released. This is a logical perspective for someone who only buys AMD or only buys Nvidia, but in reality, these brands coexist in the same market.

I don't think it's OK. I've just come to expect that from nVidia based on the prices of the 8800GTX/Ultra, and launch prices of GTX 280 and 480/580. I wouldn't have recommended anybody buy anything higher than a 560ti in the second coming of Fermi, because to me, the 570 and 580 were a total rip.

At the time, the 5870 was incredible value and the 6970, akin to the 480 --> 580 transition, wasn't really that much of an improvement to the 5870 and still launched for $369. Then suddenly we have a $180 increase in their top single-chip GPU in 2012 because it beat the performance of the aging Fermi architecture, a few months before Kepler popped out.

cynan wrote:

In 2008, AMD was desperate for market share, so they released their new HD 4000 architecture as somewhat of a loss leader to claw back market share. Sure this made their cards exceptionally good value compared to Nvidia at the time, but such a move is risky, as it entrenches future similar products as being worth less in the eyes of the public. This probably explains some of the reason why AMD cards that perform as well as Nvidia cards (ie HD 7970 vs GTX 480) would only sell when priced $50-$100 less, even today.

Bottom line is that pricing of a product, relative to other existing products, all else being equal, is a strong factor by which people valuate them. It's a critical mass thing. AMD's bargain basement pricing of the HD 4800 cards was a long-term marketing tactic: Claw back market share, then eventually be able to sell future generations at market parity. Any other strategy is just not realistic for a business.

This is all to say that if the R9 290x really does perform as well or better than a GTX 780, then why shouldn't it sell for approximately as much. I think, due to AMD's recent reputation and market share, it would behoove them to attempt to at least slightly undercut GTX 780 prices ( and t's still too early to say that this isn't the case), but calling their top cards overpriced because they don't sell for $299 (HD 4870 launch price) is not really a perspective that is based on reality.

I'm not expecting them to launch at $299. But I'm not expecting them to price above nvidia.

$599 would have been realistic in my eyes as a launch day price. Not a reasonable price to me, but realistic given the current market pricing.

This reaks of price fixing all over again. I'm just frustrated by the trend we have been seeing in terms of GPU prices over the last 20 months.... Tahiti, GK110, Hawaii... they're all asking for too much and we're starting to look too much like Fall 2006 / Spring 2007 again.

Guys, take a step back on the pricing thing- and remember why the HD4870 was such a good deal.

AMD had it all going well with DX9- the R9700 was essentially the reference platform, and they rode that technology right up until the end. But the 8800GTX was the DX10 reference, and it positively smoked AMD's top-end gamble- the HD2900 that Waco is so fondly remembering. Further, the HD3870 was only a half-assed fix, not the real fix that AMD needed. It basically worked if you didn't turn AA on.

And that's why the HD4870 was so damn cheap. AMD had to regain marketshare, but more importantly, they had to regain mindshare, and that meant great product execution and thin margins. And they pulled it off quite admirably.

But they have that marketshare and mindshare back- they've rebuilt the value of their brand, and they've since begun pushing for returns that are in line with the market and their primary market competitor- Nvidia.

And that's not a bad thing! Lack of competition to drive innovation and control pricing is a bad thing, and that's where we'd be if AMD had failed in the GPU market; that's where we are in the desktop CPU market, after all; the precedence is staring us in the face.

The main reason that we aren't getting more performance for our dollars has already been detailed- it's because AMD refocused GCN considerably on compute without really pushing the die sizes, meaning that their top-end part had far better compute than AMD's mid-range part (but not Nvidia's top-end part), yet didn't have any more gaming potential than Nvidia's mid-range part. It was a boon for bitcoiners, but because Nvidia had the compute market locked up with CUDA (which isn't a bad thing, either), and AMD only supported the relatively infantile OpenCL, AMD's gamble didn't really pay off, while Nvidia laughed all the way to the bank and the shareholder parties.

Now, this time around, AMD is back with a bigger GCN part, that looks to be competitive with big-Kepler on the gaming front, and it's competitive enough on the compute front to get Apple's business for the Mac Pro- which is, by the way, a real victory for AMD.

So there's a number of reasons to be disgruntled about GPU pricing, and there's also a number of reasons to be optimistic; I'll also throw in this one- now that we're getting new consoles, really the best consoles relative to desktop systems we've ever gotten, demand for real GPU power is going to heat up. That means that competition is going to heat up, and that means that performance is going to increase while price decreases.

Again, the better AMD does here, the better it is for everyone!

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

$599 would have been realistic in my eyes as a launch day price. Not a reasonable price to me, but realistic given the current market pricing.

This reaks of price fixing all over again. I'm just frustrated by the trend we have been seeing in terms of GPU prices over the last 20 months.... Tahiti, GK110, Hawaii... they're all asking for too much and we're starting to look too much like Fall 2006 / Spring 2007 again.

I can't disagree that $600 would be a good target starting price for the 290x. But that's because I think AMD is kidding themselves if they think they have any other means to win market share with a card that does not perform more than 10% faster than a GTX 780 (which the 290x doesn't like like it will do) than by undercutting a bit on price. The bottom of the pricing barrel for the GTX 780 is currently hovering between $625-$650.

Final pricing for the 290x is still up in the air. It could very well be $599 after it's actually released.

I don't know if I agree with the price fixing comment. Do you really think AMD and Nvidia are making backroom deals? That, say, AMD was in on the decision for Big Kepler to be released in a $1000 gaming package as the single GPU gaming Halo product, with AMD having nothing to compete with it for months, just so that both companies could comfortably sell their high end single GPU cards at around $700 or more? That's a large pill.

Airmantharp wrote:

The main reason that we aren't getting more performance for our dollars has already been detailed- it's because AMD refocused GCN considerably on compute without really pushing the die sizes, meaning that their top-end part had far better compute than AMD's mid-range part (but not Nvidia's top-end part), yet didn't have any more gaming potential than Nvidia's mid-range part. It was a boon for bitcoiners, but because Nvidia had the compute market locked up with CUDA (which isn't a bad thing, either), and AMD only supported the relatively infantile OpenCL, AMD's gamble didn't really pay off, while Nvidia laughed all the way to the bank and the shareholder parties.

I don't think AMD was really betting Tahiti would take off as a compute card. We're not getting more performance for our dollars because AMD didn't have anything to compete with big Kepler. Added to this, Nvidias reputation, for some reason (beyond driver snafus and frame pacing issues that mostly only a small fraction of the market even cared about) for the past couple of years has been so much better than AMD, that they were able to get away with pricing the Titan and GTX 780 as they did and still have enough people buy them.

I think the investment in the compute prowess of GCN, and perhaps the compute ability in Big Kepler (beyond the obvious that this is derived off of professional compute products) is due to their investment in future requirements of gaming hardware; that, more and more, games will benefit from custumizable/programmable parallel processing, rather than just cramming the most shader units you can squeeze into whatever die size. While you could argue that they were a generation too early relative to their competition (as this was a reason why Nvidia had a lower-power and equivalently/faster performing parts), AMD had to start making this transition somewhere. So we had GCN and Tahiti.

not meaning to go off toic but dint want to start another thread but is discussion related to NSA banned?
asking cuz my thread was deleted when i mentioned about xbox being able to recognise what we speak through kinect :/

killadark wrote:

not meaning to go off toic but dint want to start another thread but is discussion related to NSA banned?
asking cuz my thread was deleted when i mentioned about xbox being able to recognise what we speak through kinect :/

You should PM moderators instead of asking here...

clone wrote:

while pooping on AMD's drivers is fashionable in the media their drivers are the least of my concerns, especially when Nvidia just released a new driver that comes across very much like AMD driver releases albeit with much more vague admissions in it's release notes.

I don't care what's fashionable. I've had many cards from both camps and I can tell you, at least in my case, that I'd much rather deal with the green camp on drivers.

Airmantharp wrote:

But they have that marketshare and mindshare back- they've rebuilt the value of their brand, and they've since begun pushing for returns that are in line with the market and their primary market competitor- Nvidia.

I agree that overall they have regained mindshare. They don't have mine though...but on the AMD gaming Facebook page they sure do have a lot of people singing their praises. It would take a permanent frame pacing fix and lower prices to be able to count me among the people who can get behind their products, though.

I recommended a 7950 to a friend before Kepler came along. I know a few of my posts lately seem a little nVidia biased as though it's OK for them to do something but not for AMD to do the same.

The thing is, nVidia has always done these bad things, pricing their cards too high, wood screws to show a "complete" Fermi card, etc.... I had very little respect for them after the 280 launch price and the GTX 480 wood screw fiasco, huge temps, and power hunger, and delayed launch compared to the 5870, which came to market sooner and held its own in terms of performance. I was really rooting for them during the 4870-5870-6970 years. But they've lost me over the last 2 years.. their strategy is very different now and it doesn't appeal to me at all.

I feel like nVidia was very smart to release focused gaming card in the GK104, I don't care about compute performance, I'm a gamer. The Titan doesn't appeal to me for the same reason, which is why I kind of like the 780, since it takes a compute hit but still delivers the same fastest single gpu experience available on the market today (unreleased 290x nonwithstanding). At $650 I still think it's priced too high and I wouldn't buy it.

I've really been hoping that AMD could come along and shake things up again and make things interesting by obliterating the 780 / Titan. It seems to be about the same as either, perhaps slightly better. But in my mind, an AMD card should be priced lower than nVidia, because to an enthusiast like myself, they still have some mindshare to make up for. They still have a reputation of having bad drivers (whether the drivers are actually bad at this point is debatable), anybody who follows hardware news or rumours knows about the frametime problems. I'm sure that's not an issue for most GPU buyers who don't follow these things at closely, if at all. They probably just see the Never Settle bundle and think "FREE GAMES, AMD R0X0RZ!"

And maybe they do... I mean, without nVidia to compare AMD to, you have a world-class graphics creator. ATI was a Canadian company and that was something I used to be proud of before AMD bought them out. But I don't know... their current pricing just turns me off.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe I have a point. I'm not sure anymore.

Speaking of "Red Camp":

Origin PC Now Dealing Exclusively with Nvidia Graphics

"Alvaro Masis, a Technical Support Manager for Origin PC, issued the following statement to Maximum PC:

"Primarily the overall issues have been stability of the cards, overheating, performance, scaling, and the amount of time to receive new drivers on both desktop and mobile GPUs.We’ve also seen a high percentage of failures on AMD cards in the field within the first few months. Even after replacing with multiple AMD cards the failures continued. Switching these same exact customers to Nvidia resulted in fixing these failures and therefore obviously a much more positive customer experience."

This statement may sound like an intentionally false accusations BUT I do not believe they would be lying - after all AMD can always sue them for libel...

JohnC wrote:

Speaking of "Red Camp":

Origin PC Now Dealing Exclusively with Nvidia Graphics

"Alvaro Masis, a Technical Support Manager for Origin PC, issued the following statement to Maximum PC:

"Primarily the overall issues have been stability of the cards, overheating, performance, scaling, and the amount of time to receive new drivers on both desktop and mobile GPUs.We’ve also seen a high percentage of failures on AMD cards in the field within the first few months. Even after replacing with multiple AMD cards the failures continued. Switching these same exact customers to Nvidia resulted in fixing these failures and therefore obviously a much more positive customer experience."

This statement may sound like an intentionally false accusations BUT I do not believe they would be lying - after all AMD can always sue them for libel...

This statement reeks of sponsorship by Nvidia. I don't think they could be sued for libel from the statements they've issued because it would be almost impossible to disprove. But the thing is, even if true, why the die hard commitment?

If it really was as innocuous as they say - that their tech department has been asking them to discontinue AMD GPUs due to problems in the field - then why not just quietly discontinue AMD cards for the time being without fanfare? At the least, they could just announce that they're temporarily not using AMD due to these issues. But the article says "from here on out". So again, why the commitment? What's in it for them?

Woah.

I'd be really surprised if AMD cards really had a higher failure rate...though it could be totally due to Origin PC's choice of board partner if they really are higher...