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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Homeles - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Guarunteeing yourself a card on launch day is worth an additional premium. It's also unlikely that the MSRP is that low, in light of the information in this article.zeock9 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Do recall that Nvidia has GTX780 at $650 and AMD can't go above that unless it completely trashes it which I don't think it's capable of from what I've seen - its selling point is 780/titan like performance at a lower price.So yeah, the MSRP better be about $600.
Wreckage - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
$700+ and it may or may not perform as well as a 780 which you can already get for $650.Even loyal AMD fans have to be pretty upset with this.
Homeles - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
It's not going to cost more if it doesn't outperform the 780. That would be completely asinine.Da W - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
7970 launched at a high price because there was no competition from Nvidia for a couple of months. Now there is the 780 at 650$ and the 7990 at 700$, R290X CANNOT go higher than this. In all likelyhood its gonna be cheaper, anticipating that 780 won't stay at 650$ either.Will Robinson - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
If Wreckage and His Divine Odor are upset about it...you can bet your ass 290X is going to be a fine card.RussianSensation - Saturday, October 5, 2013 - link
You bet there will be a lot of butthurt when a 424mm2 chip that has more VRAM trades blows with a 561mm2 NV flagship after all the talking about how Kepler was a far more efficient GPU architecture and that it's not feasible for AMD to release a GPU with much more performance and much larger die than the 365mm2 Tahiti XT.SolMiester - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Is that like the butt hurt for Eyefinity users with Crossfire and broken drivers after 2 yr release date?garadante - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Uh oh... I'm getting worried that AMD isn't going to enter the market pricing this thing competitively. The way I see the market reacting, something around $550, or even as low as $500, would shake things up a ton and put some fierce competition back on the table, which is good for consumers. If the base price for a standard R9-290X is closer to $700 though, how does this force Nvidia to either slash the prices of their Titan and 780 or release more powerful cards? The 780 gets to Titan levels at $650 (or less), and the rumored leaked benchmarks currently don't give the R9-290X much of a lead over Titan if at all in some titles.Also, a key question nobody yet knows with any certainty is how the compute will be on this card. Titan is an absolute beast for compute, so if the R9-290X saved die size by stripping out compute units and just went for gaming, that doesn't give Nvidia any reason to cut Titan's pricing. We need to get back down to reasonable flagship card costs, and stop this $1,000 card nonsense.
haukionkannel - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Well, this is preorder price... Not the same as normal selling price...So far there seems to be guite consessus that it will be between 595-645$...