Video Card Tuesday: $370 R9 290X & Borderlands: TPS Now Shipping
by Ryan Smith on October 14, 2014 7:45 PM EST
Following up on last week’s Radeon pricing observations, it looks like there has been one final shift in Radeon R9 290 series pricing. While R9 290 has held steady around $299 with the occasional small rebate, we’ve seen R9 290X continue to fall and drop below the roughly $400 price they were going for last week. Finally stabilizing, the R9 290X has leveled out at around $370, with a handful of cards going for even a bit less than that. At $370, the R9 290X is now $30 less than the week before and this puts it just $40 over the MSRP of the GeForce GTX 970.
Though I had been expecting prices to fall further, I am a bit surprised to see R9 290X prices drop below $400 so soon. With GTX 900 series availability still being outstripped by demand, Radeon prices needed to come down from their initial MSRPs in reaction to the NVIDIA launch, though not necessarily this quickly. Regardless, this does mean that the R9 290X is in a better position than it was last week; AMD can’t completely close NVIDIA’s technology advantage gap, but from a price/performance ratio anything that brings R9 290X closer to the similarly performing GTX 970 will help AMD’s partners move cards. In the meantime it’s worth noting that AMD appears to be sticking to their guns on influencing product value through game bundles rather than engaging in a pure price war, as the $370 R9 290X goes hand-in-hand with the continued inclusion of AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundle.
Speaking of game bundles, NVIDIA sends word this afternoon that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is now shipping for customers who received vouchers as part of NVIDIA’s recent game bundle. This bundle was never extended to the GTX 900 series – NVIDIA is clearly having no trouble selling those cards right now – but this offer is still active on the higher-end GTX 700 series cards as part of the company’s efforts to sell off the remaining GTX 770/780 inventory.
| Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Radeon R9 295X2 | $1000 | ||||
| $550 | GeForce GTX 980 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290X | $370 | ||||
| $330 | GeForce GTX 970 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290 | $300 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280X Radeon R9 285 |
$250 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280 | $200 | GeForce GTX 760 | |||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
82 Comments
View All Comments
TiGr1982 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
2 GTX 480 - that was quite a grill, I guess :)(480 was fast for its time, but not exactly power efficient even by 40 nm GPU standards :) )
chizow - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Hehe yep, extremely hot and power hungry, but not quite as bad as 290/290X ;)But yes that's exactly why I won't go 2x250W GPUs again.
TiGr1982 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Yes, I agree; regarding Hawaii, its power/heat situation is the reason I decided not to change my current quiet ~ 200 W HD 7950 Boost (with DualX fans), bought a while ago, on Hawaii (especially, I almost don't really use it recently due to a lack of time).meacupla - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Heat and power constraints in an mITX system?That and 290/290X are right at the limits of their thermal output, quite a lot of them throttle, which means there's no overclocking headroom, unless you swap the cooler it comes with.
just4U - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
A 290 or X variant with the stock cooler is non starter for most I think. They have to overhaul that big time. Nvidia hit the right mark with their stock high end cooler. Even though there is way better out there it has a nice bling feel to it and cools reasonably well to the point where no one minds owning it. AMD has to follow suit.aphroken - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
IMO, just spending a little more $ for reduced power consumption to have a lesser environmental impact is virtuous behaviour. However the 970 also happens to be cheaper than the 290X; so you save $ on the purchase, save $ on power bills and save the environment a little. What's not to like?But say the prices were reversed, I'd still opt for a 970 because of the lower power consumption.
TiGr1982 - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Good environmental behavior is a good thing. I'm just afraid videocards don't matter much in terms of environmental impact, as long as people here in North America like to use vehicles with 5.7 L engines for personal transportation :)just4U - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
oooh I just bought a new F-150 and I think it has a V8 variant of that :D (I do carry 32F ladders and usually about 800LB of equipment btw so it's warranted) I was using a 08 Ford Ranger before that with a V6 in it and this one is getting roughly 25% better fuel economy.They say the 2015s will be even better dropping 700LB in weight and redesigned and while I was tempted to wait... I thought hmm... if this is near total overhaul what's the chances it's going to come with a few kinks that take time to work out.
aphroken - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
The environmental impact of any single source will tend to be small in comparison to the aggregate of all sources. Change has to start somewhere.The most important thing is a message is being sent. A big no no to energy/power inefficiency. When consumers have a preference for lower power consumption, corporations will try and work towards satisfying that preference. Personally I'd like to see the direction into reduced energy consumption spill into other industries too.
There are benefits to you even if you're an individual who is completely indifferent to environmental concerns. Electricity (or any source of energy) will be cheaper when there is less demand for it. It will save everyone $ on power consumption.
D. Lister - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
Yeah, I'll take the 290X, but please keep that glorified DLC of a game with the incomprehensible Aussie slang, 90's sitcom humor, and the low gravity "feature" that first came out with the original Unreal Engine in '99 - and I say so as a huge fan of the first two games. :(