While sitting on the couch watching some college basketball I decided to start browsing Amazon.com and Newegg.com for some Radeon R9 graphics cards. With all of the stock and availability issues AMD has had recently, this is a more frequent occurrence for me than I would like to admit. Somewhat surprisingly, things appear to be improving for AMD at the high end of the product stack. Take a look at what I found.
| Amazon.com | Newegg.com | |
|---|---|---|
| ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II | $599 | - |
| Visiontek R9 290X | $599 | - |
| XFX R9 290X Double D | $619 | - |
| ASUS R9 290 DirectCU II | $499 | - |
| XFX R9 290 Double D | $499 | - |
| MSI R9 290 Gaming | $465 | $469 |
| PowerColor TurboDuo AXR9 280X | - | $329 |
| Visiontek R9 280X | $370 | $349 |
| XFX R9 280 Double D | - | $289 |
| Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 | - | $299 |
| Sapphire R7 265 | $184 | $149 |
It's not perfect, but it's better. I was able to find two R9 290X cards at $599, which is just $50 over the expected selling price of $549. The XFX Double D R9 290X at $619 is pretty close as well. The least expensive R9 290 I found was $469 but others remain about $100 over the suggested price. In reality, having the R9 290 and R9 290X only $100 apart, as opposed to the $150 that AMD would like you to believe, is more realistic based on the proximity of performance between the two SKUs.
Stepping a bit lower, the R9 280X (which is essentially the same as the HD 7970 GHz Edition) can be found for $329 and $349 on Newegg. Those prices are just $30-50 more than the suggested pricing! The brand new R9 280, similar in specs to the HD 7950, is starting to show up for $289 and $299; $10 over what AMD told us to expect.
Finally, though not really a high end card, I did see that the R7 265 was showing up at both Amazon.com and Newegg.com for the second time since its announcement in February. For budget 1080p gamers, if you can find it, this could be the best card you can pick up.
What deals are you finding online? If you guys have one worth adding here, let me know! Is the lack of availability and high prices on AMD GPUs finally behind us??
i wish i had the money for an
i wish i had the money for an AMD R9 290, currently have a HD7870 and am playing older games so i haven’t need to upgraded.
also putting my money in to a pair of backup drives, so a GPU upgrade for me is a little bit away.
Here in Sweden there have
Here in Sweden there have never been any shortages or any exorbitant prices. Many online stores (and there are many of them) have had 50-100 pieces in stock for months. Prices have been steadily falling to. I saw the Sapphire R9 290X 4GB selling for 3500 SEK today, that is including all taxes etc. About 550 USD, and again, this is including 25% VAT.
Guess you should have been
Guess you should have been running an export business. 🙂
great move and just two weeks
great move and just two weeks after I bought a 780.
AMD FTL.
Newegg has the ASUS Radeon R9
Newegg has the ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II “on sale” via it’s “St. Paddy’s” promo for $579. I ordered one on Thursday along with a new WQHD monitor. It looks like the prices on the different 290x models have dropped between $100 to $150 in the last week or two so hopefully we’ve seen the end of the absurd prices.
I thought the R9 290 MSRP was
I thought the R9 290 MSRP was $399.99?
Adding an aftermarket cooler ~$40
Honestly, $469 (newegg) for MSI’s R9 290 with custom cooler doesn’t seem that bad.
The specific MSRP of that
The specific MSRP of that card is supposed to be $419 according to MSI.
Ryan, can you tell us the
Ryan, can you tell us the MSRP of the other custom cooled cards? The prices had already spiked when they started being released so we never got a firm idea of how much they were actually supposed to cost over the reference card.
I’ve been eyeing the Sapphire 290 Tri-X, but really have no idea how much farther the price might fall.
Ryan,
Is there a link for
Ryan,
Is there a link for that price? This site says the MSRP is SUPPOSED to be $469
http://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/review-msi-radeon-r9-290-gaming-4g/19995/17/
Not trying to cause a stir, I
Not trying to cause a stir, I googled this card + msrp and that site came up with that price so when I saw it on newegg at that price I bought it last week. I just wanted to see if I got the card at around MSRP since the other brands (ASUS, Gigabyte, Sapphire, ETC…) were still $499+ and I saw good reviews for this card + cooler design.
I wish Amazon will start
I wish Amazon will start selling these cards on Amazon.ca
Prices in Canada has not changed much.
I could say “Darn Coiners”
I could say “Darn Coiners” but I do not plan to buy until an HSA Board comes out (with a CPU), hopefully by Christmas. These early buys can only help AMD (and NVidia) to drive future prices lower.
Nice to see the prices are not too high.
I think people understand that ASCIs, FPGAs, or quitting (can not compete) is the way to go. The homer can not match someone who mines with millions of dollars worth of equipment. The ‘new’ Coins (and those too busy mining to follow trends) are all that is adding to the price; that bubble may soon break too.
I poked around here looking for a big comparison first (before posting an offsite) and noted Tom’s has a recent big review (with 3 week old price), big drop recently: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-and-290x,3728.html .
Thanks for all your great work here at PCPer.
Bitcoin != Litecoin/Dogecoin
Bitcoin != Litecoin/Dogecoin
So glad to see these cards
So glad to see these cards return to where they should be. They are great gaming options as long as they are at realistic prices.
BTW, Go Big Blue!
Mike
Taylorsville, Ky.
Ryan: Finally, though not
Ryan: Finally, though not really a high end card, I did see that the R7 265 was showing up at both Amazon.com and Newegg.com for the second time since its announcement in February. For budget 1080p gamers, if you can find it, this could be the best card you can pick up.
Ryan why don’t you call the R7 265 launch for what it really is: A mostly late paper launch that only purpose was to have reviewers use it against the Nvidia GTX 750 Ti.
The R7 265 has again sold out almost instantly on Newegg from the one and only supplier.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202096
AMD never intended for the R7 265 to ever be fully available and with only a single supplier and the limited stock when available it fully looks like a snow job that reviewers took hook line and sinker.
Heck even now you seem to be giving AMD a kiss for having the paper launched, limited supply R7 265 making a once in every 10 days showing for a few hours.