AMD Radeon R9 290 reviews

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Originally Posted by Heinz68

Looks like you're right, I was hoping the reason for the shortage was , AMD shipping GPU's to the partners for custom build cards and underestimating the reference card inventory.

Right now the 290 series are sold out everywhere, same goes for the 7900 series, even R9 280X are hard to find. Some price gouging is already going on. Right now only one R9 290 available at Newegg for $460, "Free Battlefield 4 game w/ purchase, limited offer" LOL is more like full price for the game.

All the R9 290X are sold out and all "Auto-Notify" prices are higher than the MSRP.
The worst is ASUS R9290X asking $630, hope this wont last too long, otherwise the custom built cards will cost arm & leg.

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Makes me think AMD should start producing ASIC or specialty product if this trend continues. With AMD engineers and a decent budget, they could whip out an ASIC that devours these GPU's. As is, it seems to be taking away products away from people who want to buy these cards for their intended purpose which is gaming.

I don't know how long these trends or things are going to continue, there are way too many crypto currencies popping up and I have a feeling its going to get regulated. As is, it seems like a money launderer dream or the wet dream of people in the illegal trade business. Being able to transfer and hold millions of dollars in a harddrive vs a suitcase and being able to cash in at anytime/anywhere seems to be a really convenient thing for criminals. If bitcoins become stable, I don't see why criminals wouldn't use it. Imagine, they could store money anywhere they want and its barely traceable except when it gets converted into cash and you can do this anywhere in the world. It also lets you cut out banker and overseas bank accounts.

You can seize bank accounts and block access to it. But with bitcoins, the user is in far better control of it as long as they don't lose the harddrive or storage space( which a criminal could hide anywhere), it makes it really attractive for people in illegal dealings.

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Originally Posted by kuroikenshi

^^ dude are you trying to simply kill time? I am sure there is a bitcoin thread somewhere were you can rant about things non related to "Thread: AMD Radeon R9 290 reviews"

not sure if you understand the notion of business a little bit or you're just regurgitating info to make your posts sound somewhat interesting.
oh and BTW you're about 3 to 4 years late on the whole bitcoin post.

taking away those two and a half paragraphs of filler we end up with your real answer "Makes me think AMD should start producing ASIC or specialty product if this trend continues.

Did I miss something or are you plain making stuff up? I don't read your posts because I firmly believe they don't bring anything to the forum "not even a laugh". I just remembered once more why i don't bother to read your plethora of posts.

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IF you didn't know already, whats been driving the sales of these cards up lately is litecoins and various other cryptocurrencies. Basically because of all the talk about bitcoins going up to $1200, people think litecoins are going to do the same thing and are mining while the going is good and while difficulty is reasonable. And as a result, even 7xxx series are going up in price as a result. Prior to this litecoins stuff, 280x were falling around 280-260 dollars. Now the prices are going up to somewhere around 330 dollars.

These shortages are being caused by a combination of 2 things, by demand by gamers and demand by miners and highly relates to heinz's reply(and the post he responded too). Just look at posts like this

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7599
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1795511
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1794019
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18562772


Go around and look at more about AMD card shortages and litecoins mining pops up in every topic. Thus, you will see that this stuff is highly relevant to current prices and shortages and I am not just making stuff up. People are picking up cards like crazy, even going after the used market and it is driving up prices everywhere.

Your post is really rude.

You ain't lying I'm trying to get a 4th 290x and the well is dry lol

Where's my custom cooling solutions, third parties? :mad:

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Originally Posted by Craftyman.

Where's my custom cooling solutions, third parties? :mad:

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Soon if you can afford one. :rofl:

WTH, right now only one reference R9 290 series card is available at Newegg. The ASUS R9 290 at $500, it's $100 more than the MSRP and no BattleField 4 Game included.

All the out stock reference 290 are now also listed at $500. The 290X are also up in price, now at $600 all out of stock. I was hoping some off the non-reference cards would cost less than that.

I wouldn't mind so much if it was AMD making the money, they sure need it.

Lol, so it seems that is happening, I heard something about this the other day.
Soon amd cards will cost as much as nvidia cards :D.
Lmao... :)

Anyways the cryptocoin thing...
Yeah it's being used for criminal activity lol.
I think the original idea was to take control away from criminals ironically.
Regardless anyone buying these for bitcoin is wasting there time.
Litcoin, right now its viable for a gpu to make some but I don't know how long that'll last.
And besides, I was under the impression the 7950's were the best bang for the buck, aka 280x's, not the 290x's.
I could be wrong though.
I'm talking m/h's here...

And to be honest, I think anyone getting into bitcoins now is to late.
And I think all it has come to is a bunch of criminal activity and it seems like a scam in some ways.
It's not like you're using that power for anything useful, it's just a waste.
Seems like a south sea bubble of sorts.
I mean usually a currency is something of value, but then again the usd/euro/pound is that really of any value either?
I mean in trust in that respect, with all the crashes and conspiracy theories going on for the last 100 years.
It's no wonder people don't trust the banks and why useless crypto coins and actually have a value.

Eh I don't know.
I really don't know much about that stuff.

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Originally Posted by NEOAethyr

Litcoin, right now its viable for a gpu to make some but I don't know how long that'll last.
And besides, I was under the impression the 7950's were the best bang for the buck, aka 280x's, not the 290x's.
I could be wrong though.
I'm talking m/h's here...


Eh I don't know.
I really don't know much about that stuff.

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best bang for buck are second hand 7870's for their price and low power consumption (about 400 kilohashes when well tuned) plus has rates on Scrypt mining, that's why I find tajoh101's comments downright silly, he's just regurgitating info with NO practical knowledge on what he's talking about. No Company would abandon a proven market for a speculative one as main source of revenue, that is just PLAIN STUPID.

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Originally Posted by kuroikenshi

best bang for buck are second hand 7870's for their price and low power consumption (about 400 kilohashes when well tuned) plus has rates on Scrypt mining, that's why I find tajoh101's comments downright silly, he's just regurgitating info with NO practical knowledge on what he's talking about. No Company would abandon a proven market for a speculative one as main source of revenue, that is just PLAIN STUPID.

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Don't put words into my mouth, I never ever said AMD should abandon the graphic card market. Its more so along the lines of find supplementary income on top of what they are making. Expanding and getting into new markets when the desktop one is slowing down is something all companies, including Intel, AMD and Nvidia have been going into.

It similar to what Nvidia did and super computing. If a tiny company like butterfly labs could make asics, AMD could do much better and I don't think they would need to expend much resources if a small company could do it. They have the patents, fabrication contracts and the engineers to make much better products. Butterflies labs current product stack of available product consists of 65nm products. AMD could knock out all asic companies cold.

What AMD needs at the moment are high margin products and guess what, asics are exactly that. They sell from a 1250 and go up to tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, with the AMD branding where they likely have a leg up compared to these small companies like butterfly labs, they could dominate the market. AMD branding might not mean as much compared to where it competes today, but against smaller companies, they could do pretty well.

https://products.butterflylabs.com/

AMD has a lot of un-utilized manufacturing at GF. Currently none of their GPU line is made here and there is no point making a monster order of CPU which will not get sold anyways and will simply depreciate. They have to make something(or they pay a penalty for not ordering enough) and since this contract is a long term one, its too late to make specialized ASICS now, but in the future, they could make some asics.

Although its potentially a risky venture, they payoff is pretty high and the cost to get in won't be that crazy.

And again with the personal attacks.

I saw somewhere that many of the asic chips are being made by global foundries, for the asic builders.. I will post a link if I can find it.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

Although its potentially a risky venture

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if you expand on the quoted statement, you would probably be able to more than double the word count in your previous post
OR you could be succint for once and squeeze your speculation into a single sentence

either ways, yes the risks involved are too high a gamble for a struggling company... and it still hasn't proven to be a long term investment.. without government interference (presently, we all know it will happen) as well, when this changes we would probably have a better view on the long term risks and profits

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Originally Posted by mars

if you expand on the quoted statement, you would probably be able to more than double the word count in your previous post
OR you could be succint for once and squeeze your speculation into a single sentence

either ways, yes the risks involved are too high a gamble for a struggling company... and it still hasn't proven to be a long term investment.. without government interference (presently, we all know it will happen) as well, when this changes we would probably have a better view on the long term risks and profits

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I already said, depending how the trend continues in one of my earlier posts AMD should do it, so it is conditional. I also talked about the regulation as well.

However its one of those things high risk high rewards scenarios. The high risk is there is a good chance that something might happen to hurt crypto currencies future. What balances this out is the opportunity cost is low(and they use unused GF manufacturing capacity). None of these companies making asics is anything compared to AMD. AMD could kill any of these companies considering the talent at their company and the size of their company. The high rewards is creating a monopoly on the asics business.

Lastly one thing that might come out of this thing when and if it becomes regulated, is government minted crypto currency. Google it, it's a possibility. In this scenario, AMD can win as well if it becomes the exclusive distributor for such mining machines.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

I already said, depending how the trend continues in one of my earlier posts AMD should do it, so it is conditional. I also talked about the regulation as well.

However its one of those things high risk high rewards scenarios. The high risk is there is a good chance that something might happen to hurt crypto currencies future. What balances this out is the opportunity cost is low(and they use unused GF manufacturing capacity). None of these companies making asics is anything compared to AMD. AMD could kill any of these companies considering the talent at their company and the size of their company. The high rewards is creating a monopoly on the asics business.

Lastly one thing that might come out of this thing when and if it becomes regulated, is government minted crypto currency. Google it, it's a possibility. In this scenario, AMD can win as well if it becomes the exclusive distributor for such mining machines.

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conditional...lol... well not going to debate here about economics with you, but yea still a very 1 sided argument, because you still haven't shown the risks so not many people can quantify what you are suggesting

the US government is already moving in position to tax BTC, and BTC crash has yet to come.. as a fledging company risks are nothing, but to an established business, risks are everything despite how many words you can squeeze into an argument.

All I want to see is pics and reviews about the 290.... anything else doesn't belong here.

@tajoh101 - since you know so much about this subject why don't you write a formal letter to AMD Technologies stating how you can help guide their future in the semiconductors industry? (I think you should make it a 30,000 word Phd, shouldn't be a problem for you) who knows, maybe in their 3 plus decades of experience in the industry they never had any real direction since none of them know nothing about they industry they created.


I am not rude, I just have a non-personal dislike for repeated baseless and long arguments.

** edit, there is a bitcoin thread buried somewhere in the forum, I suggest you dig it up and talk Bitcoins there.

*** done for you http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...hp?309-Bitcoin

now you can talk Bitcoin all you like without interfering with what this thread is about.

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Originally Posted by LtMatt

One for the Gossip Goats...

http://i.imgur.com/BmgC7ds.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/AM3CMS9.jpg

Source
https://twitter.com/thenotablecalls
http://seekingalpha.com/currents/pos...rt_mc_readmore
http://seekingalpha.com/p/1gynr

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http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...6#post25465736

Not surprised, Hawaii has been more or less a smash hit. Yet, in overall numbers regardless of GPU model they still have a long way to go. That is if the November Steam hardware survey is anything to go by. 52.12% for nVidia in gaming aspect.

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Originally Posted by Final8ty

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...6#post25465736

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Of discrete GPU sales? It's laughable and don't believe this for a second.

First of all, the initial figure of 70/30 doesn't seem to be accurate (I am sure AMD's dGPU sales accounted for more than 30%). Secondly, high-end GPUs (R9) are a drop in the ocean as far as dGPUs sales go, and R7 is nothing new. They do not change much on the overall scale.

In fact, other than miners, [on forums] I don't see a huge enthusiasm when it comes to R9, either, it's a little better value than Nvidia's 7xx, that's about it.

AMD sure is pushing the hype, though.

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Originally Posted by zalbard

I don't see a huge enthusiasm when it comes to R9, either

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you can probably measure the enthusiasm by doing a word count on Tajohs posts since R9 release
More words = more enthusiasm
and going by this metric, the enthusiasm has been nothing short of breathtaking

^^ I almost think we could write 200 page book about the release of the R9 series if we grab tajoh's posts and mash em' together into an e-book.

we could title it "Tajoh Quixote"

HAVE MERCY!
http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/...psf82d04a8.jpg

holy mother of GOD!

I have heard of classical examples of demand outstripping supply, but this one takes the cake.

Prices down here have risen, thank God. Although I'm only interested in one of the aftermarket versions of the 290x. I upgrade my cards to often to be fluffed with water blocks.

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Originally Posted by ace123

have mercy!

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lol..lol

well there goes my plans of picking up a 290 for some crossfire action.

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Of discrete GPU sales? It's laughable and don't believe this for a second.

First of all, the initial figure of 70/30 doesn't seem to be accurate (I am sure AMD's dGPU sales accounted for more than 30%). Secondly, high-end GPUs (R9) are a drop in the ocean as far as dGPUs sales go, and R7 is nothing new. They do not change much on the overall scale.

In fact, other than miners, [on forums] I don't see a huge enthusiasm when it comes to R9, either, it's a little better value than Nvidia's 7xx, that's about it.

AMD sure is pushing the hype, though.

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+1

I don't believe it too.

Some numbers here :

http://tof.canardpc.com/view/b2d68b1...962022d37b.jpg

http://www.3dcenter.org/news/die-gra...n-quartal-2013

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Of discrete GPU sales? It's laughable and don't believe this for a second.

First of all, the initial figure of 70/30 doesn't seem to be accurate (I am sure AMD's dGPU sales accounted for more than 30%). Secondly, high-end GPUs (R9) are a drop in the ocean as far as dGPUs sales go, and R7 is nothing new. They do not change much on the overall scale.

In fact, other than miners, [on forums] I don't see a huge enthusiasm when it comes to R9, either, it's a little better value than Nvidia's 7xx, that's about it.

AMD sure is pushing the hype, though.

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First how did you figure out "AMD sure is pushing the hype,"?
I don't see anywhere in the links, AMD giving the 30 -70 and 70 -30% figures and I checked all the sub-links.
Anyway the "Notable Calls" who claims some AMD hardware guy gave him the figures, was not too far off about the last couple quarters, I'm sure his estimates.
http://s28.postimg.org/doy6yjbp9/JPreport.png
Desktop graphics card market share in 2013 (? Jon Peddie Research)

J doubt since September the AMD share is 70% as he stated, but I'm sure AMD share will increase in Q4 compared to the first 3 quarters of the year, they sure need it.

The price gouging and short supply will not help much, actually it might help NV cards sales.

About your claim "I don't see a huge enthusiasm when it comes to R9", it's true on this forum, but if for example one checks the OCN AMD R9 290X / 290 Owners Club, it is the fastest growing thread on that site.