[Hexus] AMD initiating significant price cuts for 290 and 290X

[KaRLiToS]

If I was AMD, I'd focus on a driver update as well right now. Whatever issues they can fix, no matter how small, they should fix now. They're going to have users switching from GTX 970s to R9 290/x. The last thing they want is "Bad Drivers" to be confirmed.

I'd be working on a "Omega Part 2" right about now.

Drivers are pretty good right now. I'm waiting for part 2 aswell. :thumbsup:

 

[KaRLiToS]

Jesus, I wonder if I should pick up another 290X lightning and rock those in my main rig and dump my Titan Z

Would you keep the Titan Z as a piece of collection?

(sorry for double post)

 

[lavaheadache]

Would you keep the Titan Z as a piece of collection?

(sorry for double post)

I dunno man... it's "worth" too much at this point to waste money like that. A couple years from now I could get one for pennies on the dollar vs. right now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Can you cite your source on this? It sounds like an opinion, and your personal, biased opinion doesn't portray anyone but yourself.

Q3 graphics marketshare for discrete GPUs and AMDs Q4 results, specially the CPU and Graphics division wasnt telling enough? Or the Q1 forecast?

 

[guskline]

Makaveli: As you can see, in my primary rig, 3930k I run 2 Sappphire Tri-X R9 290s in CF and they are rock solid PLUS they have 4G fullspeed vram.

In rig 2, I had 2 EVGA GTX 670 FTWs in SLI. Since they were only 2G Vram cards and since I got a number of Newegg Christmas giftcards I decided to sell the 670s and run a single GTX 970 (Gigabyte G1 Gamer). I ordered on 1/4/15 and ran what I believed to be a true 4G Vram video card. This past week's revelation by Nvidia disturbed me. Their lack of responsibility in addressing it properly has really soured me on them. It may be 4G Vram aggregate but even their own engineers admit that only 3.5G of the Vram runs full speed while the other .5G runs at a lower speed. Unfortunately for all consumers, this was not known until this last weekend (in addition the ROPs list were not correct).

Sure the R9 290 is slightly slower BUT it has 4 FULL gigs of Vram.

Besides, if the AMD 300 series cards turn outs to be game changers, I can run the 3rd 290 in tri fire in rig one, (I'll buy another waterblock)


After this debacle, I'm going to think long and hard before purchasing another Nvidia graphics card.

 

[96Firebird]

On the other side some users will stay loyal, just like some wives that say they still love their husbands even if they beat them.

What a low, pathetic analogy.

 

[KaRLiToS]

What a low, pathetic analogy.

Hehe, thanks. :awe:

 

[tential]

Drivers are pretty good right now. I'm waiting for part 2 aswell. :thumbsup:

I'm not really a gamer and I haven't even used the drivers I'm still on the beta.
However, I've seen a NUMBER of people on other forums say "Lol, AMD, last drivers were over a month ago. Look at Nvidia, their last driver patch was so recent they have drivers all the time.

Sometimes, it has nothing to do with how good your drivers are. It's all about perception.
Hence, why if I was AMD, I'd release a patch, no matter how small, just so it looks like the drivers are up to date drivers rather than drivers that aren't updated after months.

Sadly, that's the position we're in where we release updates simply because if we didn't, consumers think nothing is happening.

 

[Plimogz]

^^ I don't know how somebody could be complaining about lack of AMD driver updates at the moment, when Omega drivers (which are barely a month old) brought a lot of good stuff. From what I've seen over the years, last month's update was substantial.

Part 2 is, I believe, set to bring something related to configurable frame limiting to curb power and more VSR resolutions, amongst others -- hopefully Hawaii will get 4K VSR.

[...]

Gotta love it

Although I would be pretty pissed off to find out that my cards had some hidden quirk which reduced my viable fast VRAM. Considering that I bought into Hawaii CF in light of XDMA and fully expect this setup to have enough GPU grunt to last me long enough for the entire 4GB to be useful in many games.

 

[guskline]

Tential, I highly recommend the Omega drivers for the R9 290/290X

 

[boozzer]

amd shot their own foot when they launched with the worst of the worst reference coolers. I have no idea if all the reviews comparing 290 + x vs 970 + 980 are all paid for, but they all used the reference 290s.

only 1 obscure french review website actually compare the best of 290s vs the best 970 n 980.

kinda sad that even the AT review was the same huge disappointment. I can't wait for the next round of reviews comparing 39XXX vs the new nvidia offering few months later. Might just be time to stop relying on professional reviews. the worst offender was linustech, that mofo cherry pick only benchmarks that was advantageous to nvidia.

 

[ShintaiDK]

amd shot their own foot when they launched with the worst of the worst reference coolers. I have no idea if all the reviews comparing 290 + x vs 970 + 980 are all paid for, but they all used the reference 290s.

only 1 obscure french review website actually compare the best of 290s vs the best 970 n 980.

kinda sad that even the AT review was the same huge disappointment. I can't wait for the next round of reviews comparing 39XXX vs the new nvidia offering few months later. Might just be time to stop relying on professional reviews. the worst offender was linustech, that mofo cherry pick only benchmarks that was advantageous to nvidia.

Remember the press sample scandal? And it is what AMD supplied.

 

[garagisti]

Jesus, I wonder if I should pick up another 290X lightning and rock those in my main rig and dump my Titan Z


Gotta love it

I don't know if it's much use to you, but 3 Tera flops of double precision, if you get another. It's just incredible.

You're on the right track with titan, better get it out the door before any definite announcements come along.

 

[garagisti]

I'm not really a gamer and I haven't even used the drivers I'm still on the beta.
However, I've seen a NUMBER of people on other forums say "Lol, AMD, last drivers were over a month ago. Look at Nvidia, their last driver patch was so recent they have drivers all the time.

Sometimes, it has nothing to do with how good your drivers are. It's all about perception.
Hence, why if I was AMD, I'd release a patch, no matter how small, just so it looks like the drivers are up to date drivers rather than drivers that aren't updated after months.

Sadly, that's the position we're in where we release updates simply because if we didn't, consumers think nothing is happening.

They were on a monthly cycle before and guess what, people were complaining that nothing major happens. Some people just like to take the piss out of amd, and it can be frustrating trying to find proper info. They're bringing out updates, what if they pulled a Kepler on you?

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Just helped a friend nab a new 290 for $205 after $30 mir. Really wish I had a reason to upgrade...

 

[skipsneeky2]

Just helped a friend nab a new 290 for $205 after $30 mir. Really wish I had a reason to upgrade...

380/390x may be your reason,hell if performance is great and cheap enough i may even look into selling my 970 and spending the difference and going with one myself.

Hopefully it delivers.:thumbsup:

 

[Cookie Monster]

I think its superb for consumers.. but margins must be razor thin and have been for along time now. Perhaps they're also making room for their new GPUs.

 

[RussianSensation]

I dunno man... it's "worth" too much at this point to waste money like that. A couple years from now I could get one for pennies on the dollar vs. right now.

I would sell the Titan Z regardless if you go 2nd 290X or not. You played with it, you got the satisfaction of owning it, but now it's losing value like rotten food as you said the longer you keep it. Sell it now and buy GM200 to play with if you want. Whether or not you want a 2nd Lightning 290X is about you needed more performance. Sooner or later either a 380X or GM200 will approach Titan Z in performance for $700-800 and the Titan Z's resale value will drop even more.

They were on a monthly cycle before and guess what, people were complaining that nothing major happens. Some people just like to take the piss out of amd, and it can be frustrating trying to find proper info. They're bringing out updates, what if they pulled a Kepler on you?

Exactly. It has nothing to do with how often AMD releases drivers vs. NV. Most truly loyal NV users don't stop buying NV after it stopped optimizing for Kepler. Most loyal NV users never abandoned NV when AMD had superior perf/watt with HD4000-early 7000 series lead. Most loyal NV users never bought AMD cards for mining. Even after FX5000 and GF7, they still only buy NV. All it is to them is picking some new metric they want to make important today to justify the reason they keep buying NV. Today Perf/watt and power usage are most important. Tomorrow it could become price/performance or overclocking or compute. If all else fails, they'll hide behind AMD's drivers suck and that they can't live witout TXAA, MFAA, PhysX, CUDA.

Essentially the market has core NV, core AMD and in-between users who buy either or. Over the years we have known that the core NV base is much larger than the core AMD base and that AMD loses the most market share when they are late to market, which is when the in-between users just buy NV.

I think its superb for consumers.. but margins must be razor thin and have been for along time now. Perhaps they're also making room for their new GPUs.

Agreed. This is a more long-term play to try and get some NV users who never bought AMD before to switch and hope they consider buying some AMD card in the future. The low price and good performance allows these users to try AMD on the cheap, with little overall performance compromise against the 970/980.

The interesting thing is though AMD's next gen mid-range tends to match or even outperform last gen's flagship:

4850/4870 < 5770
5850/5870 < 6870/6950
6950/6970 < 7850/7870
7950 v1/7970 < 280/280X
290/290X < 370/370X

The question is how much will 370X cost?

If we assume 380X is $649, 380 is $499, then 370X is $349 and 370 $299. That means a $300 card should be nearly as good as a 290X. Second point of support is AMD will surely need to have a $299-350 card faster than the 9-10 months old $330 970 by June-July 2015, otherwise what's the point?!

If we assume pricing follows 290 series, then, 380X is $549, 380 is $399, 370X is $299 and 370 is $249. Once again shows how close 370/370X would be to 290/290X. That means at this point 290/290X are still not "cheap enough" to warrant not waiting for 370/370X for those not in a rush to upgrade. I would say once an after-market 290X is $199, then it's more or less ensured it will be a better value than AMD's next gen mid-range cards.

 

[railven]

I've always trusted AT reviews, only a few times I got a weird feeling from them.

Then I fell down some rabbit hole and realized everyone is basically lying to me to push their own bias. Whether that bias is funded or sponsored only affects the level of the bias promoted.

At this point, I just ask posters, then follow my gut. Then I got no one to blame but myself.

Also, what's the price cut - I can't to find anything official. I WAS planning on getting the GF a 970, but might just give her my 780 and get a Radeon if the price is right (just so I can say I owned a R9 290/X. Haha.) Would be the first time I completely skip a Radeon generation.

 

[Erenhardt]

I would sell the Titan Z regardless if you go 2nd 290X or not. You played with it, you got the satisfaction of owning it, but now it's losing value like rotten food as you said the longer you keep it.

Technically rotten food doesn't loose value as it has none to begin with. Rotten food = 0 value.

Other than that, you post is 100% accurate.

 

[railven]

Technically rotten food doesn't loose value as it has none to begin with. Rotten food = 0 value.

Other than that, you post is 100% accurate.

Dem semantics! To add, certain rotten food has tons of value if you're into bio-fuels.

 

[Deders]

What people don't seem to realise is that you can fit more data into 3.5GB using the 970's data compression than you could in a 290's 4GB.

 

[DownTheSky]

The latest Omega Drivers have been rock solid for me. What AMD should be doing is having the game developers give them a week or two early access to their games so they can issue hotfixes for said game at or prior release. (I watch u Dying Light).

 

[.vodka]

Is that so? Nvidia and AMD when they talk about their memory compression algorithms, they clearly say the benefits are in bandwidth savings, not in space savings as in compressing data for storage. I realise you can save bandwidth by transferring less data, but then you have both sides talking about bandwidth savings...

Anyway, both brands started way back with the bandwidth saving efforts (HyperZ on RV100, LMA on NV20) and have been improving their "secret sauces" for generations. That in this generation in particular that area has been a target for optimization to the point of having it advertised on both sides, might be just a coincidence.

 

[KaRLiToS]

The latest Omega Drivers have been rock solid for me. What AMD should be doing is having the game developers give them a week or two early access to their games so they can issue hotfixes for said game at or prior release. (I watch u Dying Light).

We can't expect much from developers using GameWrecks.