R9 290 Price Rant

[Compacted]

So I have been Super Super excited to get an R9 290 Graphics card with an aftermarket cooler. I've especially been looking forward to the Asus R9 290 DirectCU II OC edition.

At the RRP of $399 for the stock version i was sure I would be in for $450 for the Asus Custom version; now imagine my shock when i see it listed on pretty much every E-tailer for $600. Seriously guys WTF !!! AMD aren't selling you the chips for $150 more so why are you charging us, your "Valued" customer $150 over recommended retail price.

I understand the whole supply and demand thing and the MASSIVE issue that is cryptomining at the moment but we the gamers' suffer immensely with these hyper inflated prices.

I'm SUPER pissed off to say the least,

Is anyone else feeling the same way?

 

[CropDuster]

Pretty much. I finally broke down and ordered the xfx 290 DD for $492. It'll be my first amd card so I hope its worth it. I would've spent $500 for a 780 anyways.

 

[moonbogg]

I wanted a couple pretty bad. Guess i'll wait till next gen.

 

[KingFatty]

Well maybe AMD will get off their butts and make more chips?

But if lots of people want that card, it is sort of fair to distribute the card to the person who is willing to pay the most.

It's sort of like how things work in Ebay. The high price the vendors are charging is just the market's way of telling you that you keep getting outbid.

 

[Ventanni]

Before the cryptocurrency explosion, the lowest I saw a 280x was like $279 after rebate I think. Now, the cheapest 280x on Newegg is $419.

(All of these prices are just Newegg though btw).

I think it's also had an indirect effect on Geforce pricing as well. I think a lot of people who would have bought cards like a 280x are now going the Geforce route due to the cryptocurrency demand, and that's keeping the prices of cards like the 770's higher than what they normally would be at this point in time. I'd expect the 770's to be at the $299 mark roughly, but they're in the $330 range still. Not hugely overpriced, but more expensive than I'd expect (still a good buy though).

The Radeon 270X's are priced pretty well though imho.

 

[TreVader]

Don't worry, when bitcoin crashes for the 20th time and Altcoins become worthless all the idiot miners will be selling their cards for peanuts.



I'm gonna be laughing my ass off.

 

[gdansk]

It is unfortunate for gamers. The only thing AMD can do is to increase production, but considering they likely didn't anticipate this boom it will take a few months to increase supply.

DigiTimes reported "TSMC 28nm utilization rate to rebound in 1Q14", and I suspect AMD is partially responsible with Kabini and increased GPU orders.

 

[sandorski]

Don't worry, when bitcoin crashes for the 20th time and Altcoins become worthless all the idiot miners will be selling their cards for peanuts.



I'm gonna be laughing my ass off.

Except they will all had made up the cost of those cards a few times over by then. They'll be laughing harder than you.

 

[nwo]

The Radeon 270X's are priced pretty well though imho.

Not really considering that the 7870s were going for $150 or less just a couple of months ago. A 270(X) is just a renamed and slightly beefed up 7870. 270X's are selling for $230+.

Except they will all had made up the cost of those cards a few times over by then. They'll be laughing harder than you.

This.

And the only way I see a massive spike in supply of cards is if the electricity cost of cryptocoin mining exceeds the income by at least 50%. In addition to that, the price would have to remain steady and show no signs of recovery for at least 5-8 weeks before people give up hope. But unless cryptocoins are banned altogether which is extremely unlikely, they will bounce back up sooner or later. Because there are a lot of people out there with cheap/free electricity that will still be mining their asses off once people start bailing out.

Also, we have recently seen bitcoin go from $1,200 to around $500 in a matter of a few weeks. And what happened? It recovered back up to $700-800 within 2 weeks and nobody saw an increase in supply of graphics cards on the market. Bitcoin is now steadily climbing back up to $1k again.

 

[Despoiler]

My 7970 kicked over the weekend. There are plenty of 290/290x cards out there at outrageous markups. $100-200 over MSRP for everything. All the stores are more or less the same. They probably have bots that look at all of their competitor's prices and adjust theirs accordingly. So much rage. We should get some love soon. From what I have seen all of the warehouses are expecting their shipments at the end of the first week or the second week of February.

BTW Bitcoin is not driving the GPU shortage. GPUs haven't been mining worthy for a couple years unless you had a very very large operation. Most of those guys made the switch to FPGAs and then to ASICs. Litecoin on the other hand is what is killing the AMD card supply.

 

[IEC]

If you're willing to backorder there are still plenty of cards to be found between -$10 thru +$20 off MSRP.

I just placed a backorder for a Sapphire Tri-X 290 @ $463. I don't particularly care when I get it, I just wanted another for the chip lottery as I have water blocks on the way and want to take my three best clocking cards for triple-Crossfire.

 

[Midwayman]

Yah, the price gouging is killing me. I can understand on the secondary market, but from retailers its kinda distasteful. At least it is encouraging me to wait for a process shrink

 

[broken_pixel]

Don't worry, when bitcoin crashes for the 20th time and Altcoins become worthless all the idiot miners will be selling their cards for peanuts.



I'm gonna be laughing my ass off.

Why post asshat comments for something you do not even understand? I have been mining cryptocurrency for years and have been able to collect a nice bag and pay for my hardware and exchange into US fiat.

Keep the faith in the Fiat & Federal Reserve.

Also people do not use a GPU or GPUs to mine Bitcoin anymore, it has moved into the ASIC market now.
Also the price is effected by the availability of the Chips not so much the Scrypt mining boom.

Cryptocoin talk belongs in the cryptocoin thread. Ranting about 290 prices and what's driving them is fine, but if you want to get into coins you need to do it in another thread
-ViRGE

 

[Mondozei]

So I have been Super Super excited to get an R9 290 Graphics card with an aftermarket cooler. I've especially been looking forward to the Asus R9 290 DirectCU II OC edition.

At the RRP of $399 for the stock version i was sure I would be in for $450 for the Asus Custom version; now imagine my shock when i see it listed on pretty much every E-tailer for $600. Seriously guys WTF !!! AMD aren't selling you the chips for $150 more so why are you charging us, your "Valued" customer $150 over recommended retail price.

I understand the whole supply and demand thing and the MASSIVE issue that is cryptomining at the moment but we the gamers' suffer immensely with these hyper inflated prices.

I'm SUPER pissed off to say the least,

Is anyone else feeling the same way?

I feel your pain. Where I live the Sapphire Tri-X costs $25 dollars above MSRP.

(Sorry )

 

[ICDP]

Here in the UK custom cooled R9 290/X cards sell for only ~£20-£30 over their reference brethren. It took AIBs far too long to get these custom cooled cards available in numbers. So for the 1st month only one retailer had them at extortionate prices. A Sapphire R9 290X three weeks ago cost £500 and now they are £440 (£20 over reference price). This is down to pure greed by the retailers.

Thankfully sanity has prevailed and R9 290 custom cooled AIB versions are available for excellent prices.
Reference R9 290 = ~£310
R9 290 WF3 = ~£330

By contrast the cheapest custom cooled GTX780 is ~£50 more expensive.

 

[wand3r3r]

The prices on the egg are absurd. A lot of the good cards (custom 290's) are $580-600. This is actually pretty crazy.

 

[Z15CAM]

Here in the UK custom cooled R9 290/X cards sell for only ~£20-£30 over their reference brethren. It took AIBs far too long to get these custom cooled cards available in numbers. So for the 1st month only one retailer had them at extortionate prices. A Sapphire R9 290X three weeks ago cost £500 and now they are £440 (£20 over reference price). This is down to pure greed by the retailers.

Thankfully sanity has prevailed and R9 290 custom cooled AIB versions are available for excellent prices.
Reference R9 290 = ~£310
R9 290 WF3 = ~£330

By contrast the cheapest custom cooled GTX780 is ~£50 more expensive.

310.00 GBP = 571.278 CAD

How can you say you're not being ripped off when the card listed at 399.99 CAD = 217 GBP

Seems to me retailers have scaled prices around the world

 

[Pantalaimon]

310.00 GBP = 571.278 CAD

How can you say you're not being ripped off when the card listed at 399.99 CAD = 217 GBP

Seems to me retailers have scaled prices around the world

European prices have pretty much always been higher compared to North American prices when you convert them to USD or CAD. That's the baseline. So compared to that baseline, there hasn't been any extra mark up due to the high demand from miners.

 

[Abwx]

Seems to me retailers have scaled prices around the world

That seems to be a north american only tendency...

20% VAT included , a typical retailer in France :

http://www.ldlc.com/informatique/pi...aphique-interne/c4684/+fv121-10230,10187.html

290 start at 340€, 290X at 440€.

 

[guskline]

I just checked Newegg and the least expensive R9 290 is $539.00. When the R9 290 debuted at $399 I hesitated (stupid me) because I wanted to see the reviews. I had 2 GTX660s in SLI in rig 2 below but wanted to go to a single card and the R9 290 price point fascinated me. Suffice it to say when the least expensive card jumped to $499 it wasn't hard for me to spend a few more sheckles and get a EVGA GTX780 Classified.

I think moonbogg is correct. This unusual demand which has caused the prices to soar will cause me to wait another generation for a video card(s).

 

[Vesku]

It's funny that some people weren't sure they would buy the 290 and 290X at their MSRP and now you are lucky to find it close to that price. Clearly the price has been affected by "coin" mining as the high prices are mainly in the US for once, where electricity prices make mining viable.

TSMC said they had a drop in 28nm wafer orders in Q4, so there is the possibility AMD has taken advantage of that available capacity and has increased their production volume. If so prices should drop a bit in a month or two.

 

[MeldarthX]

*chuckles* UK and European prices have always bent people over; but there hasn't been any major mark ups.......the prices are near normal if you just look away from New Egg; they've been known for years to jack prices up way nasty when something sells well.

A little digging and you can find them normally.....

 

[JBT]

Meh I picked up a Asus DCUII for $440 on Amazon, just waiting for to ship in a week or so now.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

*Shrug* I'm happy. Sold my 7970s for more than what I paid for them 2 years ago and got a free upgrade to 780 B1s

 

[T_Yamamoto]

*Shrug* I'm happy. Sold my 7970s for more than what I paid for them 2 years ago and got a free upgrade to 780 B1s

Thats one of the upsides of cryptomining