[WCCFTech] 290X Specs Confirmed and Benched

[chimaxi83]

So if it soundly beats the Titan, that means the goals have shifted to stock price / financials, right? Watch it happen.

That said, the inner skeptic in me says: who is this guy? At xtremesystems?

I'm not sure who the guy is, either way, I'm excited lol.

And yes, you know the finance guys come out of the woodwork when they're beloved gets beat. It's comical. Stock, revenue, finance, R&D budget, and PhysX will all become relevant.

Found this posted on AMD Gaming FB page:

In celebration of the upcoming launches of two of the most important announcements in PC gaming this year, we’ve worked with EA to create the AMD Radeon R9 290X Battlefield 4 Limited Edition available, online for reservation starting today with select resellers and partners. There were only 8,000 of these made so make sure to add your name to the list before they’re all gone! Recommended AMD Radeon R9 290X pricing, specs and performance will be unveiled in the coming weeks. We haven’t released pricing and won’t comment on pricing seen on some e-tail outlets.

Strange they "won't comment on pricing".

 

[SiliconWars]

He's talking about overclocking on air, seems the 290X is great with that.

 

[smithkt]

Strange they "won't comment on pricing".

Perhaps they don't want to tip their hand to NV before the products are actually available for shipping? Keep NV from making a preemptive price cut?

 

[blackened23]

He later clarified the 290X is outright faster than the GTX 780 consistently while being a few % behind the Titan in some games (while winning others). Sounds like at stock clockspeeds, the 290X is firmly ahead of the 780 while trading blows with Titan. Which is fine IF the card is 600$. If its 729$, well I wont' be happy about that. Overclocking will be the thing to look at, it seems.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I am quite sure we got the proper price via Newegg. Specially when one card is listed (secretly) at 729.99 and another at 799.99. Newegg.ca also had it listed at 749.99 I think it was. Before it got replaced with placeholders.

 

[boxleitnerb]

He later clarified the 290X is outright faster than the GTX 780 consistently while being a few % behind the Titan in some games (while winning others). Sounds like at stock clockspeeds, the 290X is firmly ahead of the 780 while trading blows with Titan. Which is fine IF the card is 600$. If its 729$, well I wont' be happy about that. Overclocking will be the thing to look at, it seems.

That makes no sense since the 780 and Titan are only about 10% apart.

 

[blackened23]

I am quite sure we got the proper price via Newegg. Specially when one card is listed (secretly) at 729.99 and another at 799.99. Newegg.ca also had it listed at 749.99 I think it was. Before it got replaced with placeholders.

Per OCUK, no retailers have been told the final price yet. Not even ones doing pre-orders. They're all placeholders.

I really don't think AMD is stupid enough to price it at 729$. I hope they're not that stupid. Or it could be a bF4 edition price. I don't know. We'll have to wait, I guess.

 

[blackened23]

That makes no sense since the 780 and Titan are only about 10% apart.

Well, you know as well as I do that some games favor AMD and some favor NV. I'm guessing they traded blows depending on game tested. Blizzard/Activision and Ubisoft games always are faster on NV, while others could net a win for AMD. Square-Enix games favor AMD. But he did state it was consistently faster than the 780 while trading blows with the Titan. The Titan won more but, we don't know what he tested.

 

[Elfear]

The poster over at XS clarified that at stock clocks the 290X is a couple percentage points behind the Titan on average. So it still looks like a great card if MSRP isn't crazy (not looking hopeful at this point). Sounds like it overclocks well on air/water too.

Just don't want everyone blowing things out of proportion and then being disappointed when the 290X doesn't beat the Titan by 50%.

Edit: Doh! Beat me to it with my slow phone.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Outright faster could mean 2% faster in every game. People need to be careful with how things are worded, for example if I told you a 5 year old car can be had for a fraction of a new one, sounds great. Well except that fraction could be 22/23, the statement is still true.

I don't trust any of these supposed leaks, people that have cards and are testing are under strict NDA, highly unlikely numbers from those people are being leaked.

 

[Keysplayr]

That makes no sense since the 780 and Titan are only about 10% apart.

When things don't make sense, it's for a reason.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Per OCUK, no retailers have been told the final price yet. Not even ones doing pre-orders. They're all placeholders.

I really don't think AMD is stupid enough to price it at 729$. I hope they're not that stupid. Or it could be a bF4 edition price. I don't know. We'll have to wait, I guess.

If people pay and the supply is limited in terms of production capacity. Why not? AMD and nVidia is not here for charity because some people think they are entitled to buying below a certain pricerange for the best parts.

 

[x3sphere]

If people pay and the supply is limited in terms of production capacity. Why not? AMD and nVidia is not here for charity because some people think they are entitled to buying below a certain pricerange for the best parts.

Besides maybe the regular 290 will be the better buy. 780-ish performance with overclocks on par with the 290x.

 

[powruser]

Extremely glad I snagged my Asus 7970 for $268. Have it clocked at GHz Edition speeds and score 7600 on Firestrike. The extra performance just isn't worth the $ to me.

 

[raghu78]

If people pay and the supply is limited in terms of production capacity. Why not? AMD and nVidia is not here for charity because some people think they are entitled to buying below a certain pricerange for the best parts.

I agree that every business needs to do what it needs to do to be profitable. But I am not happy that both these companies have slowly but steadily pushed the flagship GPUs to USD 600+. The days of USD 500 flagship GPUs are gone and it seems they may never come back.

If AMD price the R9 290X at USD 600 and match Titan then I would say its just bearable. any higher and AMD are as blameworthy as Nvidia in increasing high end GPU prices much to the detriment of consumers.

 

[nOOky]

Extremely glad I snagged my Asus 7970 for $268. Have it clocked at GHz Edition speeds and score 7600 on Firestrike. The extra performance just isn't worth the $ to me.

That's a great price: my Sapphire has been running at the same speeds since day one almost 2 years ago. I balked at the price, but $550 seems to have been worth it for all the use I've gotten out of it.
Still, AMD always seems to come out with something new and exciting every 2 years when I refresh my PC. I may wait for the next nvidia refresh this time as the HD7970 is still working fine for me.
At the very least prices will be down by then.

 

[RussianSensation]

Extremely glad I snagged my Asus 7970 for $268. Have it clocked at GHz Edition speeds and score 7600 on Firestrike. The extra performance just isn't worth the $ to me.

If the future of flagship GPUs is $650-1000, I'll be extending my upgrades until I can get 2x the performance increase. 7-10 years ago when you got a new GPU, it was the difference between playing the latest game at decent settings/fps and almost not being able to play it. This is no longer the case as you can lower a couple settings and get a 30-50% performance boost. Without next gen PC games, I find it a bit hard to justify these prices. Hoping that 20nm will bring some nice improvements in price/performance such as 780/R9 290X level of performance for $399.

Looking forward to 780 oc vs. R9 290x oc benches. If AMD releases only reference R9 290X cards for the first 1-2 months, that would be a big let down for enthusiasts.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

All of you liars are balking at the price now, but you know full well you will cave under the new toy spell and spend money.

 

[Vesku]

All of you liars are balking at the price now, but you know full well you will cave under the new toy spell and spend money.

I'm riding my 7950 into 20nm. If the 290X is fast and efficient it just means the 20nm version will be good too.

 

[Silverforce11]

All of you liars are balking at the price now, but you know full well you will cave under the new toy spell and spend money.

If I was single sure, why not, what else to spend my $$ on right? But its hard to justify folking all that dough when it provides such a measly performance increase.

 

[MrK6]

If the future of flagship GPUs is $650-1000, I'll be extending my upgrades until I can get 2x the performance increase. 7-10 years ago when you got a new GPU, it was the difference between playing the latest game at decent settings/fps and almost not being able to play it. This is no longer the case as you can lower a couple settings and get a 30-50% performance boost. Without next gen PC games, I find it a bit hard to justify these prices. Hoping that 20nm will bring some nice improvements in price/performance such as 780/R9 290X level of performance for $399.

Looking forward to 780 oc vs. R9 290x oc benches. If AMD releases only reference R9 290X cards for the first 1-2 months, that would be a big let down for enthusiasts.

All of this, well said. The price/performance, especially considered in the context of newer games just doesn't justify it. It's more that I seriously wouldn't spend the day taking down my loops and refitting everything. I think I may only jump every new process instead of with every new series.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

If the future of flagship GPUs is $650-1000, I'll be extending my upgrades until I can get 2x the performance increase. 7-10 years ago when you got a new GPU, it was the difference between playing the latest game at decent settings/fps and almost not being able to play it. This is no longer the case as you can lower a couple settings and get a 30-50% performance boost. Without next gen PC games, I find it a bit hard to justify these prices. Hoping that 20nm will bring some nice improvements in price/performance such as 780/R9 290X level of performance for $399.

Looking forward to 780 oc vs. R9 290x oc benches. If AMD releases only reference R9 290X cards for the first 1-2 months, that would be a big let down for enthusiasts.

I think the 20 nm transition with new cards is going to be the first time in recent memory where a $600-700 GPU MAY make sense because of the new technology (ie., Maxwell, AMD equivalent) and because by then we should be seeing inklings of the next gen console ports perhaps having some impact on our attempts to run the same games at higher resolutions.

We may even have more 4K monitors out there, which will exacerbate any shortcomings (especially in memory sizes for current gen cards). Around that time, a new upgrade to the high end could well make sense given how long we're seeing GPU (and CPU) generations last. We may well see Maxwell/AMD equivalent last for two years before it gets truly replaced at the rate we're going now.

In that scenario, a $600-700 high end Maxwell GPU makes a lot of sense. Of course, by then AMD and nVidia may have raised the high end GPU price to $1k for the gamer part and $1.5k for the full DP-enabled part.

Again at the rate they're going.

 

[tential]

If the future of flagship GPUs is $650-1000, I'll be extending my upgrades until I can get 2x the performance increase. 7-10 years ago when you got a new GPU, it was the difference between playing the latest game at decent settings/fps and almost not being able to play it. This is no longer the case as you can lower a couple settings and get a 30-50% performance boost. Without next gen PC games, I find it a bit hard to justify these prices. Hoping that 20nm will bring some nice improvements in price/performance such as 780/R9 290X level of performance for $399.

Looking forward to 780 oc vs. R9 290x oc benches. If AMD releases only reference R9 290X cards for the first 1-2 months, that would be a big let down for enthusiasts.

This is probably why the cards are more expensive now. There isn't a need to purchase them every year.

This is why I'm willing to pay up to 500+ dollars sometimes(I never do but I'm willing to). It's because I don't need a new card every year or two. I can wait 4 years on the same card and be fine. I was using a 9800M GTS for the 5 past years and was fine. I should get the HD7950 again for CFX but I'm being dumb. Hoping Mantle extends the life of my current HD7950.

But like you said, I can just turn down a couple settings, and I really am happy doing that rather than paying for GFX cards. I'd rather keep my cards 4-5 years (old console life cycle) and upgrade when I feel like it or like you said, when performance increases justify it. I'll never upgrade "because I feel like it".

 

[Lepton87]

I wonder why they clocked the memory so conservatively. They have a chance to regain the performance crown, it would be a shame if they missed it by clocking the card too conservatively. OTOH the titan is in another price bracket

 

[n0x1ous]

I wonder why they clocked the memory so conservatively. They have a chance to regain the performance crown, it would be a shame if they missed it by clocking the card too conservatively. OTOH the titan is in another price bracket

Does using 512 bus + lower speed save power vs 384 bit and high clock RAM?

Thats the only reason I can think why....