Following the launch of the AMD Radeon R9 290X last week, the rumor mills have started up once again in regards to a couple of other product launches we're expecting in the coming weeks. Beginning with the Radeon R9 290, the little brother to the R9 290X, reports have begun to appear relating to its alleged launch price.
With the R9 290X priced at $549, it's believed the R9 290 will be available for $449, featuring the same Hawaii core with a few disabled compute units. Going on leaked specifications, the graphics card comes with 2560 stream processors, a base core clock of 900 MHz with a boost of 946 MHz, and 4 GB of 5 GHz (effective) video memory on a 512-bit bus.
In the Nvidia camp, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti is being readied as a serious competitor to the R9 290X. Rumor has it the GPU will essentially be a faster version of the GTX Titan, clocking the core and memory higher rather than unlocking the final SMX unit on the GK110's die.
Supposed 3DMark benchmark scores from the GeForce GTX 780 Ti indicate the card is marginally faster than both the Titan and the R9 290X. Nvidia is expected to launch the card at $649: $100 more than the 290X, with the company betting on its faster performance to make it seem attractive to prospective buyers.
Both the Radeon R9 290 and GeForce GTX 780 Ti will reportedly launch very shortly, just in time for the holiday gaming period. If you're thinking of picking up a new GPU for your system, it may be worth waiting a few weeks to see how these new cards turn out.