Video Card Tuesday: $370 R9 290X & Borderlands: TPS Now Shipping
by Ryan Smith on October 14, 2014 7:45 PM EST
Following up on last week’s Radeon pricing observations, it looks like there has been one final shift in Radeon R9 290 series pricing. While R9 290 has held steady around $299 with the occasional small rebate, we’ve seen R9 290X continue to fall and drop below the roughly $400 price they were going for last week. Finally stabilizing, the R9 290X has leveled out at around $370, with a handful of cards going for even a bit less than that. At $370, the R9 290X is now $30 less than the week before and this puts it just $40 over the MSRP of the GeForce GTX 970.
Though I had been expecting prices to fall further, I am a bit surprised to see R9 290X prices drop below $400 so soon. With GTX 900 series availability still being outstripped by demand, Radeon prices needed to come down from their initial MSRPs in reaction to the NVIDIA launch, though not necessarily this quickly. Regardless, this does mean that the R9 290X is in a better position than it was last week; AMD can’t completely close NVIDIA’s technology advantage gap, but from a price/performance ratio anything that brings R9 290X closer to the similarly performing GTX 970 will help AMD’s partners move cards. In the meantime it’s worth noting that AMD appears to be sticking to their guns on influencing product value through game bundles rather than engaging in a pure price war, as the $370 R9 290X goes hand-in-hand with the continued inclusion of AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundle.
Speaking of game bundles, NVIDIA sends word this afternoon that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is now shipping for customers who received vouchers as part of NVIDIA’s recent game bundle. This bundle was never extended to the GTX 900 series – NVIDIA is clearly having no trouble selling those cards right now – but this offer is still active on the higher-end GTX 700 series cards as part of the company’s efforts to sell off the remaining GTX 770/780 inventory.
| Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| Radeon R9 295X2 | $1000 | ||||
| $550 | GeForce GTX 980 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290X | $370 | ||||
| $330 | GeForce GTX 970 | ||||
| Radeon R9 290 | $300 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280X Radeon R9 285 |
$250 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280 | $200 | GeForce GTX 760 | |||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
82 Comments
View All Comments
Yojimbo - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
You must have ac, garbage disposal, and you don't realize how much harder it needs to work depending on the cpu usage. I don't have ac and I can definitely tell the difference in the summer when my i5 and HD4600 are working when playing civ v compared to web browsing.just4U - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
OT:Speaking of Civ 5 .. my system bogs down even with a 4790K and a Radeon280. I actually got a message stating my system was running poorly after several hrs of play. Never saw that before. AH well.. Beyond Earth only 8 more sleeps! :D
Hrel - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Average US electricity cost is 13 cents/kwh. So the 100W difference between the cards is 1.3 cents every hour. Let's say you game 40 hours/week, which if you're spending this kind of money on a GPU should be a minimum. 52x40=2080, for ease and vacations we'll say 2000 even. It costs an additional 1.3 cents to run AMD every hour, over 2000 hours that's $26/year. Hardly negligible. Especially considering that extra $30/year or so isn't getting you anything, you're paying more for nothing at all, talk about stupid.takeship - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
Where do you live that you *only* pay 13 cents/kwh? On my bill I have 17 for the power itself, an addition 9 for the transmission cost, 5 on top of that for some odd "renewable energy surtax" and an extra 2 for "local line maintenance". Why my line maintenance is based on the amount I use, and not a flat fee, is beyond me. Sum total though, my power runs 33~34cents/kwh, not including the administration fees.Yojimbo - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Yeah, people say "this card is 20 dollars cheaper it has such better price/performance" and in the next breath say something like "the electricty savings are only 3-4 dollars a month, big deal". Being that people will keep the cards for 2+ years, 3 dollars a month in electricty savings is $36 over 2 years, which almost certainly more than offsets a 20 dollar higher price up front.Yojimbo - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
Sorry, 72 dollars over 2 years. In this case it's quite a significant difference.Yojimbo - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
And that doesn't even consider extra room cooling costs. For a heavy gamer, it probably is worth it to get a card that uses 100 less watts and performs the same as another card even if the first card costs 50 dollars more.just4U - Thursday, October 16, 2014 - link
I don't think it works quite that way.. I usually have my computer on 24/7 but was working out of town for 3months.. the savings on my electrical bill wasn't as much as I'd hoped it would be. I was thinking around $50 a month.. turned out to be 12ish. There are many factors that come into play I am sure and you can't just assume a instant savings of any given amount.Yojimbo - Friday, October 17, 2014 - link
Not sure what your poor estimation of your total electric usage while away compared to when you're there has to do with a pretty well-established difference in energy usage between two systems. It's simple. You pay the utility d dollars per kWhr used. If your system means you use x less kWhr in a month than another system, you are going to pay dx dollars less than if you had the other system. These are the factors that come into play.just4U - Wednesday, October 15, 2014 - link
1. I don't over clock my cards and don't buy pre overclocked cards.2. The performance is fairly equal so if the price is as well.. why not?
3. Backorder on 970s whereas there is stock on 290/x
4. Go big or go home. I'd take a 980 but going down to the 970 you have just opened up several different options.