AMD Puts R9-290X Pre-Orders Live; Asks for $200 Deposit

[SKYMTL]

heres the best question...would sky pre-order a 290x?

On the record: absolutely not. I'd wait to see perf figures before making a commitment.

 

[BootlegUsher]

Humm,

Last time AMD got me back on their side (after the original ATI X800 Pro AGP 8x release, $600 Cdn when I bought it at NCIX in 2004 as far as I remember, don't remember why it was so expensive), was the release of the HD5870...Pretty nice cards, better than the GTX285....I bought one from NCIX in 2009, second batch they received, I had my name in for pre-order kinda deal (the XFX reference one, $425 PM'ed at the time). Very nice, DX11 and all that!!!

By the time DX 11 was actually used by more than a few "showcase" titles, my HD5870 1GB card was old news...

Now, buy blind, usage/promises of DX11.1 features, and Mantle (proprietary thru GCN Arch.)....although AMD's masterpiece is the "BF4/EA/DICE partnership"...

That causes some Battlefield players to be "all ears"...waiting for reviews...

These rumors of $730 make me sad. I am planning on upgrading my PC this year. The last time I upgraded was 2009, when the 5870 was the best single GPU card you could buy. Those sold for $380 at the time. I ended up buying a 5850 for $280 on sale. That was some serious value for the performance I was getting. Even though the 5870 was faster than Nvidia's GTX 285, AMD didn't go pricing it at $730 dolllars. I think in the end it was a smart strategy for AMD, because if you make a card that is better then the competition's, and sell it for less, they will fly off of the shelves. At $730, many people will say "yeah, its the fastest right now, but I'm not paying that much for a GPU".

I know that I'm not going to crack $500, so I'll be buying whatever is in their lineup that is less than that. Its a shame, because back in 2009 it felt good to have a top shelf GPU.

 

[great_big_abyss]

That causes some Battlefield players to be "all ears"...waiting for reviews...

Yuup. I'm awaiting reviews, and if the R9 gives any sort of better experience in Battlefield, I'll probably be jumping on it.

 

[SKYMTL]

Just wait for the final version of Battlefield 4 before making a decision about which card to buy. Any beta benchmarks are pretty pointless since most optimizations from AMD and NVIDIA will be targeting the final code of the game.

 

[great_big_abyss]

So from the sounds of it, you'll be posting a review before the final version of BF4 is out?

If that's the case, I really really hope you do a follow up mini-review with updated benchmarks once BF4 has been out for a few weeks.