Graphic Cards AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU releases

R

Rickyk

Skilled
Probably the card I will buy, provided its not ridiculously priced...

From Toms -
Asus has finally provided a teaser of its upcoming Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II that appears to be comprised of two cooling fans (including a single CoolTech unit), four nickel-plated heat pipes with at least two 10 mm pipes, and a PCB strengthening bracket.
Although the technical specifications are currently unknown, the fact that this is a DirectCU II card and includes Asus' Super Alloy Power Technology makes it almost certain that the graphics card will be factory overclocked.
Since the Asus R9 290X DirectCU II edition is still in development, the information provided in this post is subject to change. We have yet to receive any concrete information about the card's release date or retail pricing.
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^-end of toms article

AMD's timing is really very bad IMO. Its been quite a while now since they released the 290/290x and there's still nothing on the market. With Christmas fast approaching, a traditionally busy time for shoppers in the US & EU, AMD and their board partners are really shooting themselves in the foot with late releases of custom 290/x offerings.

Nvidia on the other hand, announced the 780Ti much after AMD did with the 290/x and yet they already have 3rd party 780Ti solutions on the market. Then again, this is largely due to the fact that stock 780Ti's from Nvidia run much cooler by default than the the 290/x do, making it easier for Nvidia's 3rd party sellers to offer their solutions much quicker. Plus its a tried and tested design, flowing from the older 780 series.

However I do feel AMD has missed a trick here. AMD should have taken its board partners into confidence a month (or even two) before the official 290/x launch and asked them to start looking into custom solutions. I doubt they did that simply based on the fact that there still aren't any 3rd party 290/x boards for sale even today.

Or maybe the 290/x series is proving to be very challenging even to AMD's board partners...
 
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Here's a 29 page, complete review with benchmarks -
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_r9_290x_directcuii_oc_review,1.html
For those who want a quick summary -
Products like the ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC is the gear we have been waiting for. After a few weeks reporting on the temps and problems related to it, we feel AMD made an average choice with the reference coolers of the 290X, I mean it's a great card but the 94 Degrees C temperature target is a hint troublesome. The ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC however eliminates all that thanks to the DirectCU II cooler. In fact you'll even have more reserve to actually be able to actually overclock the card. A pure win in my opinion. In the end products like shown today will make the entire enthusiast segment will go down a little in pricing. I expect that in the first weeks after the release of this product the pricing will be over inflated due to high demand and low stock, but then once DirectCU II sits at 499 EUR, that is where it will make the difference. As such we can only conclude that the ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC is seriously attractive product, with its great volume of 4GB graphics memory and raw rendering performance it will surely offer you an extensive amount of gaming performance into your PC. The heat levels, and noise levels are no longer a trade-off and effectively have been eliminated. That makes the card a serious contender against NVIDIA's line-up.
Yeah, it's the 290X that are custom cooled that will make the difference, this ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC is a perfect example of what the 290 and 290X really needs to be.
Another review -
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...64694-asus-r9-290x-directcu-ii-oc-review.html

Some notable points from the above reviews -
  • The temperature under heavy game stress for the card stabilized at roughly 77 Degrees C which is significantly lower than 94 Degrees C for the AMD reference model
  • Due to more effective cooling, long term stressing of the card does not result in down-clocking anymore, allowing the card to run at a higher clock resulting in consistent, faster performance. Win win win! :)
  • ASUS’ R9 290X DirectCU II is an amazingly quiet card in both Silent and Performance modes. The Performance Mode in particular is impressive since it achieves noise levels that are nearly impossible to hear over typical system sounds without sacrificing one iota of performance. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, it makes Silent Mode all but pointless. When compared to a stock R9 290X, the difference is like night and day.
In short (and as expected), all the "problems" associated with AMD's reference design, have been totally eliminated with a custom cooling solution making this card an absolute killer! Can't wait to see what AMD's partners come up with for the regular 290's which are (likely) to offer even better price/performance ratio!

The fact that AMD doesn't offer efficient cooling solutions with their reference designs (like Nvidia does) and instead depend on 3rd party cooling solutions is quite disappointing but that's another issue altogether.

Coming to price - a reported 500 Euros! Package includes BF4 Deluxe Edition with extra DLC and weapons. On the other hand, HardOCP states that it will be on sale in Jan in the US for $569.99 which if true, would make it a 100% buy for me at that price.

Similarly, MSI's Radeon R9 290X Twin Frozr OC is currently listed as available for pre-order for C$699.99 at NCIX, which is approx 35k and again, a very good price indeed!

35k is a great price for these cards IMO, provided you could get them from abroad. I would expect Indian retail prices for the two above cards to be anywhere between 48-60k, going by past experiences. IMO, at that price range, it makes sense to get the GPU's from abroad though Warranty would always be an issue...
 
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World's first custom cooled R9 290x for review .. Kudos to Asus but is there any news for custom cooled R9 290 [ non x ] which should be a more VFM gpu.
 
None yet, but soon I guess. The bigger problem will be availability and the fact that sites abroad tend to ignore "manufacturer suggested prices" and offering products at "inflated prices" as is currently the norm for 290/x GPU's.

This is something I don't get. In India, we have consumer protection laws in the form of MRP. Legally, nothing can be sold above MRP here unless some "services charges" are involved, (ie. serving an item in a restaurant). I'm surprised to see that there appears to be no such price protection for consumers abroad. I would have thought the US would more stringent when it comes to consumer price protection but apparently it isn't which is why one often sees higher prices on online sites abroad that often exceed even what the manufacturer themselves allow...
 
I will get one if it gets priced below 40k. Historically and GPUs have been well priced in india. I paid 32k for my 7970 in Jan 2012 when it was retailing in the US for 549$. Hope it stays so. No one should buy the reference 290 cards as they throttle pretty bad. This is a very good option though.
 
I think I will be waiting till Feb to buy a 290 non x ..probably Asus. Hope It's below 35k at least. Are non reference cards more expensive than reference ones..??
 
a little bit mostly but they worth it and as time passes by their prices will also drop :D

@Rickyk - look at at the price of some components of FK and many gpus have inflated price in here only even cpus too. For eg. a puny pentium G3220 is $69 on newegg but here it costs ~7k ;)
 
^ I know, I agree with you. And its not just PC components.

Take the PS4 for example. I recall it being listed on Bestbuy US at launch for $450.

Indian launch price? 40k!?

I will admit that I am clueless about consoles, being a "PC Only" gamer so I may well be wrong but I read that this has something to do with the fact that India is "grouped" along with the EU by Sony so we get the EU version of the PS4 at EU prices.

If true, this sounds a little odd considering India's standard of living and income levels are nowhere near that of citizens of most countries in the EU. Therefore setting pricing based on EU realities in India sounds ludicrous. After all, I'm pretty sure that there is no difference in terms of hardware costs for the PS4 regardless of whether its the EU or the US version. The differences probably are to do with Blu-ray region locks etc. However that hardly justifies pricing it the same here as in the EU.

Even stranger, I saw a post on another site where someone posted that the PS4 reportedly sells for 28k in Dubai - and this is the same "region" version that's on sale in India!

Are our duty structures that high so as to cause a 12k difference in price between Dubai and here? If so that's really shocking but somehow I doubt that the case.

Sony probably just feels that since there is no "Xbone" competition around yet they can price it pretty much whatever they want in India and get away with it.

The funny thing is that Amazon.com's current price of $650 for the PS4 is way above what Sony had set for it initially. This is what I meant with my earlier post. There's apparently no concept of MRP or MRP protection for consumers in the US...
 
Re: PS4 pricing on Amazon - that's really weird because when I checked yesterday, the price I was shown was $650. I double checked it to make sure.

I do get your point about artificially high MRP's but in the case of the GPU's AMD suggested a retail price of $549 for the 290x. I refer here to the "reference" model of the cards given by AMD to 3rd party suppliers. If you open newegg and check however, these same "reference" versions were sold over $600. That is way above AMD's suggested price. I assumed that AMD's suggested price would also be the MRP. Maybe I was wrong to assume that.
 
I think I may have figured out the Amazon price aberration issue. When I checked yesterday, it was probably out of stock with Amazon itself - as in "Amazon Fulfilled", so it showed me 3rd part sellers for the PS 4.

Below is the price tracker info for the PS4 via 3rd party sellers on Amazon -

Dec 20, 2013 01:47 PM $649.99
Dec 20, 2013 01:00 AM $699.97
Dec 19, 2013 12:47 PM $889.99
Dec 19, 2013 12:06 AM $599.95
Dec 18, 2013 12:17 PM $599.99

That's how much (and how fast) the price fluctuates and where I got the price of $650 from. Good to see that Amazon and newegg are selling it for $399 though. It certainly makes the Indian price of 40k seem glaringly high.

Similarly, the cheapest 290x I could find on Amazon.com is $675 with the most expensive one at $762. These are the base reference models that AMD "suggested" carry a retail price $549. These are being sold at highly inflated prices by 3rd party sellers as Amazon isn't offering the 290x itself, probably due to shortage related issues.
 
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Didn't want to start a separate thread for every new 290/x card released so adding Sapphires forthcoming cards here as well.

Comprehensive 32 page review with benchmarks -
http://www.kitguru.net/components/g...ire-r9-290-tri-x-oc-review-1600p-ultra-hd-4k/

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(To any moderators/admin(s) who happen to read this thread, is it possible to rename the thread topic from
"Asus Unveils Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II GPU" to
"Custom Radeon 290/x GPU's"
or something similar? I couldn't see an option to do it myself so I guess a moderator/admin needs to do it.)
 
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The Gigabyte R290x Windforce is currently "in stock" at Newegg for a WHOPPING $700!
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125499
IMO, this sort of pricing defeats the entire purpose of releasing these cards.

Another custom R290x on its way, the HIS Radeon R9 290X IceQ X2 Turbo with a preorder price of £499.99. Via Toms -
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Overclockers UK, has listed the HIS Radeon R9 290X IceQ X2 Turbo graphics card. This graphics card is a custom Radeon R9 290X solution, and as such features a non-reference cooler.

The Unit's PCB appears to be blue, though it remains unclear whether the PCB, beyond the color, is of a custom design. The IceQ X2 cooler on the unit carries two 89 mm fans, along with a pair of eight heat pipes parallel to another three 6 mm heat pipes.

There was no clear word on the card's clock speeds, but if the increase in clocks is the same as that of other custom solutions, then it's reasonable to expect about a 40 MHz bump over the reference 1000 MHz clock speed.

The card is not available for direct purchase yet, but rather for preorder. It'll become yours sometime in January if you preorder for £499.99.
 
^^ Sigh, only if MSI can fix their A.S.S. in here otherwise not much enthusiasts in here is going to be interested about MSI products no matter how good it is.
 
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