AMD STUNS with the R9 290 - Beats Titan, cost's $600 less!

@http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/04/amd_radeon_r9_290_video_card_review

AMD just dropped a bomb with the R9 290 not only because it only 5% slower than the R9 290X and GTX Titan (and even beat's the Titan in games like in Metro Last Night or Company of Heroes 2) what's so special about this GPU is that it cost's only $400! That's just INSANE! To get Titan level performance that cost's $600 less is simply ridiculous. And it easily demolishes the $100 more expensive GTX 780.

I haven't seen this bang for the buck since the HD 4850/HD4870 launch in 2008 where the HD 4870 was beating the $150 more expensive GTX 260 and even the more expensive $300+ GTX 280 in some benchmarks. Or even in the year 2007 when the 8800 GT came close to the performance of the 8800 GTX for $250+ less.

But this is even crazier because the price difference between the Titan and R9 290 is $399 which means' it's $600 less! :O

All I can say is bravo AMD, it's about time that consumers get's reasonable prices for high end GPU's instead of forking over $650+ or charging ridiculous amounts of money for a single GPUs like nVidia charged with their $1000.0 Titan.

Bravo!

Yes, it's a strong performer. It's not without its drawbacks, but if you can live with a really loud card and don't mind missing out on some of these new Nvidia creations (Gsync, ShadowPlay, etc.) and a really reliable way to downsample (why do we still not have this supported natively, AMD???), this is the best value on the market.

I have a couple of questions.

1.Is the price of the card so high because of manufacturing or R&D?

2.Does Nvidia's card run alot cooler or something?

Titan is not a gaming GPU. Not sure why people ever thought this to begin with and lol@anyone who bought one just for that.

It also runs at 90 degrees. The GTZ 780Ti (I think) is also coming with a possible 12GB RAM which is extremely impressive

Still only reference designs looks like. Even if I didn't already plan on waiting even longer, I'd at least wait for third parties to slap better cooling solutions on there and Nvidia to respond/drop prices again.

It also has TruAudio tech, which if you have a pair of headphones, you can get an idea of by listening to this:

When it beats Titan at acceptable temperatures and noise levels i'll be impressed.

I feel bad for hermits that bought the Titan

Welcome Back Dreams-Visions!

Now someone make it not hit 95C

The titan comparison is incredibly ignorant.

Titan is NOT a consumer grade GPU. It's a GPGPU powerhouse meant for server work really.

good to be home!

Come back to the IRC, there is a lot of changes happening

They knew this day would come. Also those people are filthy rich. So in their faces, I say.

DUDE - that's FREAKY!

But, I don't want to cook my PC.

@Netherscourge: Imagine playing a game like Amnesia with that on :P

It's better than the GPGPU/Compute abilities that their past cards have offered but no longer (see charts below). And it wasn't meant for server work. They have a line of cards for "server" (I assume you mean "workstation) graphics. Quadro. This was simply the poor man's substitute that offered similar performance to their Quadro line in Compute for a fraction of the cost. But it was never mean to be a "server" or workstation card. It was designed to be a premium consumer card. If it wasn't, it would have been named, "Quadro XXX".

wait for 3rd party models with different coolers. Barely anyone buys the stock coolers on most cards anyways

TItan was such a colossal rip-off.

So glad ATI's back in the game, keeps Nvidia from butt sexing the rest of us.

Well it was never meant to be a cost/performance winner. Nor was it billed as such.

It was meant to be the Ferrari at the time: the highest performing single-GPU card money could buy, with Compute performance to make anyone struggling to afford a Quadro (sometimes needed to run certain applications and plug-ins) jump for joy. And it ran relatively cool and reasonably quiet. It's still a marvel of technology.

$400? Wow. I should have waited. I got my HD 7970 a month or so ago and paid $300 (though it came with three free games). Eh, whatever.

Great card and consolites get hyped for 1080p smdh

You're not missing out on anything but maybe that Audio technology? Your card performs similarly and runs quieter with lower power draw.

It's still rediculously expensive, I guess for video editing and the like it's great but it's just not needed for enthusiast gaming, especially now.

Yea, it was never needed for enthusiast gaming. But then again, define "need". In fact, "need" and "enthusiast" don't belong in the same sentence. The enthusiast lifestyle is one of excess. I don't need my $1,2000 headphones but you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands. :D

The ultra enthusiasts I know bought 2 or 3 of them to push out crazy resolutions across their triple-monitor setups. And they loved it. In retrospect, I'm sure some of them wish they had held onto their previous cards rather than rushing to get a Titan.

yeah, if i was going multimonitor, the 290x would be my go-to right now. AMD does it better I think

Must be nice having that kind of money, I do prefer the cost/performance route now especially now that I'm a 26 year old dude struggling in this ass backwards economy.

I know TB has 2 in SLI, but that dude obviously makes some bankroll off youtube views. I guess it's something you can only appreciate once you've experienced it.

The used performance review is weak, they only tested a small selection of games, With Metro LL at 1440p 290x only beats a titan by 2 fps, And COH 2 is an AMD bias game.

Look at BF3 maxed the titan beats the 290x "uber" at 1440p and the GTX 780 is right between the titan and normal 290x.

The results of these cards depends on the games and their resolutions and settings. the 512bit bus and 4gb of memory helps out the 290's when settings and resolutions beyond what the 2 or 3gb buffer can do and 256&384 bit bus.

As far as I'm aware, AMD Crossfire still sucks in comparison to Nvidia SLI, and generally you'll still want a multiGPU setup for serious multi-monitor gaming at good framerates and settings with major new releases.

Or, that's my understanding. I don't know a lot about multi-monitor setups so I'd have to defer to you guys. I'm very happy with my one 1080p display. For me, this card is attractive for downsampling purposes. Downsampling from 4K to 1080p @ max settings is a thing of absolute beauty. Unfortunately, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to downsample on AMD cards.

same here.

i was so ready to buy a 290x and then i read the reviews on the heat and saw the sound video's. ugh... major letdown! the last thing i want (regardless of how fast it is) is a hot hair dryer next to my head while gaming for 5 hours straight. that thing is so hot and loud that it will melt your faced off while blowing out your eardrums.

i'll pass.

gonna go ahead and go with the 780Ti until maxwell is out... amd thx but no thx

Hopefully this will get Nvidia to drop prices on their cards. I've been sitting on my dual 470's for far too long.

780 already dropped to $500

This, Titan was never marketed as a card which should be exclusively used for gaming, or as a good price/performance product... for the occasional users of certain applications who don't have the reason or money to buy Quadro cards, it's actually quite affordable.

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As for the OP, that's a good card, though the thermals are once again crazy, only this time, the fan is even louder. Unless some custom model can really cut down on all of these shortcomings, I wouldn't bother with these cards. Would just go with a good custom 780 GTX, slightly weaker in performance, but temps and noise are nice and reasonable, and as a slight bonus, you get the usual Nvidia software features (PhysX, TXAA, Shadowplay, etc)

Why would you buy a reference card if you're not going to put it under water anyway?

Wait for non-reference coolers.

Yeah great price to $400 the GPU alone cost the same as the PS4 and you need a $400 PC to put it,now and you will not get the best out of it because we know a $400 PC will not get you an i7 or close.

So once again yeah way more expensive.

But i am surprise at the level of damage control in this thread Hermit complaining about heat when on PC you can find 100 solutions for it,some going as far as to complain about fans..lol

I guess fanboys will always be fanboys no matter what platform they are,$400 dollars and it beast a $500 dollar competitor is great no matter how you slice it,more for less is better.

Taking into consideration the entire lineup of current AMD and Nvidia cards, I think it's a safe assumption to conclude that anyone that decides to go for an Nvidia GPU now is the biggest moron on Earth, sorry, no other way around. Especially if you're going high end.

The 770 price is laughable with the 290 out. Only thing holding back these cards is the cooler, imagine one of these with a DCII, or a Sapphire Toxic edition.

Yeah no, NVIDIA GPUs have plenty going for them. Shadowplay, G-Sync, PhysX etc. and then there's the 780 price cut (450 Euro) and the 780ti (which we don't have the specs for as far as i'm aware?).

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned "inb4 PhysX and better drivers!!!111".

PhysX is not that great, and not many games use it.

G-Sync: you'll need a new monitor or buy the thing separately, it's Ngreedia, so we know it won't be cheap.

ShadowPlay is the only cool feature. And RadeonPro is going to implement recording using AMD's VCE, hardware H.264 encoding, similar to what ShadowPlay does.

LOL the 780 is still $529, the $400 290 beats it, and not even overclocked, imagine that beast OC'd, will put the 780 to even more shame. The 780Ti is rumored to be $699, another overpriced turd from the green team.

It doesn't have Mantle, TruAudio and 'etc'.

AMD Gaming Evolved Control Center has video broadcast feature.

From http://www.techspot.com/review/736-amd-radeon-r9-290/page8.html

"I took the IceQ X2 cooler off the HIS Radeon R9 280X and stuck it on our R9 290 sample. Cooling was dramatically improved. The FurMark stress test maxed out at 76 degrees while the card never exceeded 63 degrees in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. So it seems as expected the board partners will be able to solve the heat issues of the reference card."

There's a potential for AMD to release R9-290X Ghz Edition after 780 Ti.

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PS; My Radeon HD 7970 1Ghz has HIS IceQ X2 cooler.

BF3?, what happened to BF4?

With BF3 at 1600p,Titan only beats the 290X by 0.1 fps and 290 non-X is right between the Titan and GTX 780.

From http://www.techspot.com/review/736-amd-radeon-r9-290/page2.html

wow you weren't kidding. That's amazing!

No physX.

It has AMD Mantle (console like APIs for the PC) and games powered by CryEngine has it's own physics engine.

http://techreport.com/news/25605/star-citizen-thief-developers-sign-on-to-support-amd-mantle-api

http://www.slideshare.net/zlatan4177/gpgpu-algorithms-in-games

Havok GpGPU accelerated from PS4 demo.

PhysX is a gimmick from Nvidia.

Sigh, look like I have to wait a little longer to get my ordered GTX 770 return and get a R9 290.

PhysX is amazing effect that enhanced Batman by a fair bit.

One the main reasons why AMD can engage NVIDIA in disruptive price war is due to R9 290X/290's smaller chip size than the GK110 (Titan/780/780 Ti).

Anyway, AMD's disruptive price war has attracted mainstream media e.g. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2013/11/05/amd-disrupts-gpu-market-again-with-399-radeon-r9-290/

Big difference with the 780 to the 290x is you don't need to watercool the thing to get acceptable temperatures, so add the cost of a water block to the 290x while you're at it.