You know this is like the nth time I've seen that on forums... "wait for custom R290"..
AMD made a huge mistake not allowing AIBs to launch custom models at the start. Their reason??: "minimizing variation to reduce potential problems"... clue for your management AMD : Your crap reference design IS THE PROBLEM.
Well it's nice to see an AMD fan actually admit that AMD screwed up instead of blindly defending them to the end, despite their lost sales precisely because of this issue. I still see tons of people selling game codes from the holiday bundle on classifieds (and no BF4 codes) so and it seems that the GTX 780 is still outselling the 290 despite the lower price. And at amazon.com, the GTX cards are still atop the sales charts despite the 290s lower price. Hmm. Wonder how this could have been different without the bad press about throttling and noise everywhere? The management at AMD really needs to get a freaking clue, the 290 could have been the best GPU release this year with super high sales numbers and right now it isn't - this is why you don't cheap out on your reference design, people expect better in 2013 when the competition has stepped up. Bad press doesn't sell cards. High quality sells cards. This is why Nvidia is STILL outselling AMD right now, and it didn't have to be this way had AMD put more effort into their engineering / design. No bad press = higher sales. Not being hammered incessantly in every review about throttling/noise = higher sales.
Maybe AMD will wisen up and do a GTX 580 style refresh complete with a much better reference design - if they did that to address the shortcomings, now that would be a good card with none of the complaints and bad press that the other 290 cards received. That would be the smart business move. Smart business moves don't happen often at AMD, apparently.
Anyway, to answer the question. I'd advise NOT getting a reference 290, if you're going that route you need to wait a month for an aftermarket card. If you want a card now consider the 770 or GTX 780. Now you may say the 780 is higher in cost. That is true, but it overclocks to be 10% faster than Titan out of the box or even more than that with an aftermarket design, AND it also comes with 3 free games which you can easily sell to recover 50-60$ of your money. So with that being the case, the GTX 780 only costs 40$ or so more than a 290 while simultaneously being a higher quality product with all metrics considered. And it is 10-20% faster than Titan if you get an overclocked GTX 780 - 40$ more for that isn't bad really, once you offset your costs through the 3 game holiday bundle. If you need a card now, that is what you should consider. If you don't mind waiting a month, the 290 should improve substantially when the aftermarket designs hit the market - I suggest not getting a reference 290, though, not unless you've used a reference 7970 at high fan speeds and are comfortable with it. I can tell you, I wasn't comfortable with my former 7970 at 47/55% fan speed.
But - again, the 290 will become MUCH more desirable when aftermarket cards hit. Those cards should be pretty freaking amazing so long as the cost is similar to the current 400$ MSRP. My opinion on reference is: no. And that is frustrating to say because the reference 290/290X could have been so so so so so so SO much better received with slightly more effort!
You should know better than to start calling out people.
-Rvenger