To make the long story short, the bottom line is
the R9 290 is under-priced, it would easy sell even at $450. Bad AMD
prized the R9 290 way too low, at least much lower than expected and speculated.
Just maybe (my speculation) the GTX 780 $150 price reduction plus new game bundle had something to do with it, so it's all bad Nvidia fault.
It all boils down to, competition is great.
Good news, the first R9 290X on sale by Sapphire at
Newegg, 'See price in cart' $499.99 "BattleField 4 game included, limited offer".
Another edit.
In the latest (12/02/2013) review by
GURU3D the Gigabyte Radeon R9-290X competed well against Titan and in some games even against GTX 780 Ti, also note the R9 290X was tested in 'Quiet Mode'
I don't think the extra cost for the GTX 780 Ti is worth the brand name, well maybe for few Nvidia enthusiast. Most people are looking at performance/price ratio plus for many $700 is more than they budget for graphic card. I can only speculate the sales volumes would confirm that.
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