Radeon R9-290X Preordering Begins Today
by Ian Cutress on October 3, 2013 11:05 AM EST
Hot on the heels of AMD’s 2014 GPU Product Showcase, along with details of the upcoming 2x0 AMD GPUs being launched, AMD was coy about the headline product, the Hawaii based R9-290X. Aside from over six billion transistors, having 4GB of memory and quoting a bandwidth of over 300 GB/sec, the only other salient piece of information released was that today is the pre-order date. To that extent we have observed the following with online e-tailers:
OverclockersUK is offering a pre-order deposit of £99 which will guarantee a card at launch. Final pricing is not yet announced, there will be more to pay at a later date when pricing is confirmed. This is the BF4 Edition, and OCUK have several hundred units up for grabs with an ETA of 31/10/13 (31st October in UK speak), and OCUK will have BF4 editions of Sapphire, HIS, ASUS, GIGABYTE and MSI cards, though at the minute there is no guarantee which one you may receive. Middle-to-end of October customers will be contacted via email at which point they can call to select the brand pay the additional money. If you are unhappy with the launch pricing or have changed your mind, deposits will be refunded.
Swedish etailer Webhallen has the ASUS BF4 Premium bundle up for 9999kr (SEK), which includes Swedish taxes. Certain websites have done the conversion direct and got a ludicrously high $1575 equivalent, but without Sweden’s 25% tax rate this comes to 8000kr, or $1262. This card was up at 7299kr ($920 USD without tax), making it still rather expensive.
TechPowerUp caught Newegg listing up both the MSI and Sapphire branded reference cards (now the XFX too), and although the pricing is listed as ‘coming soon’, a quick dig around the HTML source code lists the card at $730 excluding taxes. We are waiting the final pricing to be fully listed and will update with details, although it is suggested that this is for the full BF4 Premium edition – the regular edition may be cheaper.
For Sweden, the retailer netonnet.se is currently listing the card for 9999kr, the same as Webhallen. Interestingly enough we also get some specifications: 512-bit GDDR5, 111mm x 277mm x 48mm dimensions and a 500W PSU recommended minimum.
The Canadian branch of Newegg has the MSI, Sapphire and XFX cards all listed at CAD$750 on their mobile site, but not on the website proper.
We will update this post as more retailers initialise their pre-orders. The latest details on pre-orders seem to be coming from the @AMDRadeon twitter feed.
| R9-290X Pre-Orders | ||
| Retailer | Edition | Price / ETA |
|
OverclockersUK (UK) |
BF4 Edition Preorder (Sapphire, HIS, ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI) |
£99 deposit ETA 31st Oct 2013 |
|
Webhallen + NetonNet.se (Sweden) |
ASUS BF4 Edition |
9999kr ($1262 excl. tax) |
|
Newegg (US) |
MSI (XFX and Sapphire also listed) |
$730 (from HTML, still unlisted) |
|
Newegg (CA) |
MSI, XFX and Sapphire |
CAD$750 (from mobile site) |
There are set to be two different versions of the R9-290X available for preorder – the standard edition which contains just the card as well as the Never Settle bundle, and the BF4 Edition which has a BF4 Premium key. All arrows point to BF4 standard edition being part of the Never Settle bundle in due course, although this is yet to be confirmed.
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HisDivineOrder - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
It's marketing tricks, of course. They don't want the card being bogged down with little things like, "It won this benchmark, it lost that benchmark." They release just enough to make people think it's going to blow Titan away and then drop a price down that is worse than 780 which is more closely aligned (it's closer to 780 than it is Titan in everything but apparently price).Then when you find out differently, it's too late. You're stuck with that R9 290X either way.
silverblue - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
There's no guarantee that the 290 will perform nearer the 780 - a couple of "leaked" benchmarks doesn't really mean much.Homeles - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Have you forgotten that the Titan is barely any faster than the 780?If you've somehow come to the conclusion that this card will be slower than the 780, your deductive reasoning abilities could use a rework.
silverblue - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I think he's saying that the 290X (I forgot the X earlier) will drop price to nearer 780 levels, but the 780 will have better performance for the price regardless.Well, we'll see come launch day how this thing performs.
RussianSensation - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Doubtful. 780's performance in BF4 is already very poor for the price. R9 290X should beat it here without issues and with Mantle, it might get much worse:http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battlefield-4-PC-238...
In games like Tomb Raider, COH2 and Crysis 3, 780 also doesn't perform particularly faster than 7970Ghz. R9 290X should be very competitive in those titles. There aren't many other demanding games I can think of off the top of my head.
Will Robinson - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I hope I get "stuck with" a card that blows away NVDA's finest...Guess you are looking forward to trolling the Mantle launch as well eh?
RussianSensation - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
Notice how the troll shows up in every pro-AMD/new AMD launch card thread. One must be completely brainwashed to worship the ground NV walks on after their ludicrous $1,000 GTX690 crippled with 2GB of VRAM and $1,000 Titan that is nothing more than a successor to 580 for double the price but but it has with full DP enabled. Ironically, none of the DP compute of 4870/4890/5870/6970/7970 ever came into play for this guy until NV released a $1,000 Titan.tackle70 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Pre-ordering a high end graphics card without seeing LOTS of benchmark data is the height of fanboyism and foolishness, in my opinion.fic2 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I would think pre-ordering from the site that says the deposit is 99 and we will let you know how much more money you owe us later would be the height of fanboyism.zeock9 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
MSRP of the card is ~$599 and the game itself won't be more than ~$60,so what's the effing point of paying much more than that for this simple bundle?
$730 to pre-order?
No thank you.