AMD Radeon R9 290 Series Prices Finally Begin To Fall
by Ryan Smith on October 7, 2014 12:00 PM EST
With the launch of NVIDIA’s Maxwell-powered GeForce GTX 900 series last month, it was immediately obvious that NVIDIA had been able to deal a swift blow to AMD’s product lineup by surpassing AMD’s performance while significantly undercutting their pricing. At the time we were expecting AMD to quickly respond with the necessary price cuts to keep the R9 290 series competitive with the GTX 900 series, but surprisingly even a week later this had yet to happen.
Now a bit over two and a half weeks after the GTX 900 series launch, we’re finally seeing Radeon R9 290 series pricing fall in response to NVIDIA’s launch. AMD has not announced an official price cut at this time – and admittedly neither AMD nor NVIDIA tend to announce reactive price cuts – so it’s not clear whether this is AMD’s doing, board partner’s, retailers, or most likely all three. But regardless, retail video card prices at Newegg and other etailers have seen some substantial drops that help bring back at least some balance between AMD and NVIDIA’s high end video card lineups.
A number of Radeon R9 290 cards can now be found for around $300 after rebate, with a couple more factory overclocked models at $310. With HIS, Sapphire, PowerColor, Asus, and XFX represented, this is a broad selection of vendors with a bit less than half of Newegg’s stock now at or around $300. Meanwhile R9 290X can be found for $399, again with a wide selection of vendors and roughly half of Newegg’s stock at or near that price. The remainder of Newegg’s stock in turn generally consists of heavily overclocked or otherwise premium cards that carried their own price premium before these latest cuts.
Speaking of AMD card prices, it should also be noted that AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundle is still active even after this round of price cuts. AMD and their partners will be continuing to try to influence the value proposition of their products by including free games.
For AMD these price cuts don’t come a moment too soon, and while they are going to help the competitive landscape I’m not convinced this is the last time we’re going to see AMD cut prices. As we discussed in our review of the GTX 970, comparing stock-to-stock, the $329 GTX 970 is every bit as fast as the now $400 R9 290X. If AMD wants to be price/performance competitive with NVIDIA then there’s still an additional $70 price difference between the two cards, a gap further muddied by AMD’s game bundle and NVIDIA’s superior energy efficiency. Strictly speaking $400 may not be low enough for the R9 290X, but no doubt AMD wants to see what sales are like at $400 before cutting prices on their single-GPU flagship any further.
The R9 290 on the other hand is in an interesting spot. At resolutions below 2160p it trails the GTX 970 by around 10%, but then again at $300 it’s also priced about 10% lower. Since it ships at a lower clockspeed than R9 290X a lot of AMD’s partners also goose the core clock on R9 290, which improves performance a bit but isn’t enough to close that 10% gap. What it does mean however is that at least so long as energy efficiency is not a concern, R9 290 is appropriately priced for its performance. However if energy efficiency is a concern, then AMD doesn’t have any kind of counter to GM204 at this time.
If anything the one wildcard at this point is the availability of the new GeForce cards. Despite stock more-or-less holding up immediately post launch, we’ve seen both the GTX 980 and GTX 970 go out of stock in the last week. As of the time of this writing it looks like Newegg has received their Tuesday shipment, so there is stock available, but it’s a thin selection of just a few different cards (including a model or two at MSRP). For prospective buyers this means either playing inventory games or grabbing the AMD alternative, and for AMD this is all the more reason not to cut prices too drastically while GeForce availability is still limited. As for NVIDIA it’s been a while since we’ve seen them capacity constrained on the high end, so while it’s solid evidence that they’ve done everything right with the GTX 900 series launch, it does mean that they’re also going to be leaving sales on the table until supply and demand level out.
| Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Radeon R9 295X2 | $1000 | ||||
| $550 | GeForce GTX 980 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290X | $400 | ||||
| $330 | GeForce GTX 970 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290 | $300 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280X Radeon R9 285 |
$250 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280 | $200 | GeForce GTX 760 | |||
Source: The Tech Report
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
69 Comments
View All Comments
Zap - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
The other thing to consider is how are they measuring the 2x? Is it just the GPU itself, or the entire card including VRM efficiencies and RAM?typographie - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
I'm fairly sure that 165 W claim is the 980's TDP, not its actual power draw. Those aren't the same metrics. I don't believe I've seen Nvidia put any clear figures on what they believe the 980's power draw to be.chizow - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
@typographie: The 165W is typical board power at its RATED stock clockspeeds. The problem you see in many of these reviews, is that OEMs are using factory OC'd or increasing the power target of the card during testing Most reviews will show the differences, but some, like THG carelessly omit this information only to retract/clarify their results later, causing a lot of confusion. You will see the power draw at bone stock reference configurations is actually very close to that 165W rating and in-line with other cards with rated TDPs around it.In any case, as we have seen time and again, clockspeeds and power draw are a non-linear function, so the more you push clocks, you'll see disproportionately higher the power draw. Nvidia obviously set their reference clocks so that the 980 was still a convincing winner over the 780Ti/290X, while still maintaining excellent TDP numbers.
This in stark contract to a chip like Hawaii, where it quickly became evident AMD blew past that optimal "efficiency" threshold and went for a win at any cost approach to clockspeeds to meet their goal of beating Titan/780.
Alexvrb - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Funny how you bash AMD's 285 (overclocked models, some poorly designed) for blowing past rated TDP... yet when overclocked Nvidia chips blow TDP it's "Well they're overclocked".Oh, and Chizow... Maxwell can't hold boost. Throttles even in ordinary game titles. Whoops! You should bash them for that as hard as you bashed AMD for it. You know, since you're totally not an Nvidia fanboy and all. Tell it like it is... declare that they need a higher TDP and better cooling.
Now me personally I think the 970 is great! Especially at that price. But I know how much you hate it when a card throttles or blows past stock TDP - look at those Crysis numbers. Or is that only when AMD is involved hmm... strange...
TiGr1982 - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
@ Alexvrb1) Overall, objectively, Maxwell is really great, indeed - no doubt. Huge step ahead in power efficiency on a deep architecture level, I suppose.
2) I agree that, with all respect, it seems that there is a little bit of nV fanboi sitting inside Mr. chisow, so it's not really constructive to argue with him. E.g., he thinks that he always right that nV rules the world completely and, in particular, does not accept the 1.7X Maxwell average power efficiency improvement estimation based on comparison of 16 SMM GM204 vs 15 SMX GK110 - so, "only 2X", as Huang said from the stage - no less than that... Huang is a very smart man, but he is so smart that he likes to mix marketing and reality a little bit in his favour.
So, I'm done arguing.
chizow - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
@TiGr1982Again, if you're using the wrong source material, of course you're going to come to the wrong conclusion. If this were an exam, you've already failed, but hey, every AMD fanboi will want to believe what they like, even in the face of evidence directly to the contrary. ;)
http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-c...
chizow - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
@alexvrb, no I didn't bash AMD's 285 for blowing past rated TDP, I simply said that in order to convincingly beat the 280, it would most likely have to blow past rated TDP and clockspeeds, and it did! It took an overclocked, non-reference part to beat its 3 year old predecessor. A performance only true AMD fanboys could love (you).This is of course, completely different from the Maxwell situation, which amazingly, you still try to draw parallels to Turdga with (yeah..not an AMD fanboy, not at all!) where in BONE STOCK situations, Maxwell has no problems whatsoever meeting its rated TDP, in fact, it's dead last in most of the tests in terms of power draw compared against cards in this class, yet it still easily outpaces it's predecessors (GTX 780Ti) and the competition's best offerings (R9 290/290X).
Only in factory OC/overvoltaged results does it blow past its TDP, but the thing is, there's actually MORE benefit as it EXTENDS its lead over its predecessors.
So in summary, throttle or not, TDP or not, Turdga underwhelmed and thus was a turd of a GPU. Meanwhile, Maxwell and both SKUs based off of it, were absolutely amazing not only outperforming their predecessors while using less power, but also extending this lead even further with additional overclocking headroom.
Alexvrb - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
I've seen some Tonga based cards that do pretty well on power. I've seen others that were pretty terrible - the manufacturer was too aggressive on voltage. Either way its biggest opponent is pricing. They need to clearance the 280 and drop 285 down to about $200.Anyway I'm still in shock at your complete reversal over throttling and TDP. Shock, I tell you. You can make a lame attempt to label me a fanboy, but it's pretty laughable. You on the other hand are quite transparent, everyone here knows you're a HUGE Nvidia fanboy. Personally I think Maxwell is great. The 970 in particular is the best overall graphics chip on the market at the moment. But I'm not blind enough to think it has zero faults, at least in reference form.
Oh, and for the record I just helped a friend configure a custom gaming laptop and I had him opt for a 6GB 970M over the M290X. Gosh I'm such a fanboy, what with my history of using and recommending cards from various vendors over the years.
TiGr1982 - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
@Alexvrb I simply advise you to not to feed this troll. I didn't know about his "personality" two days ago. Now I do. So it's not really worth the time spent typing.chizow - Friday, October 10, 2014 - link
Troll? LMAO, hey I'm not the one that made this erroneous claim:"You guys are overexcited by Maxwell. Let's quantify things a bit. I would say "on completely another level" if it's really 2X performance/watt, as was advertised. But it seems to be not the case."
And then when given proof as to why that claim is erroneous, chooses to ignore it.