AMD cuts Radeon R9 290X price amid GTX 970 "issues"

Honestly, I would have preferred a counter-attack based on a product launch instead of dropping the price of an old, inefficient product.

I agree, that would have been the preferred move, but TMSC and other Fabs, are having trouble with their new nodes. Both AMD and Nvidia are on a holding pattern until the Fabrication issues are resolved. Nvidia was poised to start launching their Titan II, and AMD wants to drop their 390X line, it's just not an option right now. So, lowering the price of a competing product is the BEST and ONLY option AMD has at the moment.

On a side not, I had an R9 290 when it launched, it was hot and noisy (fixed now with OEM coolers,) but an amazing card none the less. Being able to get an R9 290X for under $300, a FLAGSHIP GPU btw is insane. The build quality on Flagship GPUs is always better than the 2nd tiers. If you're looking for a new GPU and performance is your main concern the 290X in Crossfire is probably the best option.
 
I had been a loyal AMD/ATI customer since 2000 but I've had six AMD/ATI cards die on me over the past 8 years. Two 7850's just up and died after barely a year of use and before that a 4770, a 4870, & two X1600's.

In that same time frame I had purchased about 6 or 7 nvidia cards for various builds and never had any issues.

Now I know it could very well be the card manufacturer and dumb luck at fault but I have switched to nvidia exclusively. Six dead cards in 8 years is a lot, especially when I had zero nvidia cards die on me in the same time frame.

What card manufacturer for AMD? I have had exactly ZERO AMD cards break in any of my builds over the past 5 years.
 
Meaning AMD could have been selling the card cheaper this whole time.

AMD needs to stand more firmly in their business decisions. Changing prices on a whim every time the wind blows, shows lack of confidence in their product to sell itself.

Nvidia does the same thing when AMD slips up.
 
290x is a great card!

It appears so. Remember when 290X and later 290 came out (not so long ago), they were the fastest cards and everyone was drooling over them (especially those bitcoin miners). Not until very recently does NVidia have a counter-measure -- the 980 and 970, which are awesomely efficient.

I was actually thinking about 970 but with the price-cut.... at $270? That is a steal. And for what it's worth 290X is way more efficient and performant than my lowly 7850, which cost me $250 and has been running 24 x 7 for 3 years in my main box.

The bottomline is, the competition once again benefits all of us, whether you are on the green or red team.
 
That is not how some businesses (apparently AMD) work. AMD could do the same thing with giving temporary discounts. They don't have to seem wishy washy with their business decisions. Makes me wonder what else they are wishy washy on, not just their pricing.

I don't see nVidia continually changing their rates on a moments notice. They know their product will sell and stand firm on their pricing. I don't see Intel continually crashing their CPU pricing because of AMD. But then I wasn't watching competition during Intel's sub par performance days either.

:) did you read my post!

No business will give up an opportunity for extra profit ever. A publicly traded company would get raped by their shareholders if they don't take advantage of opportunity's like that. Including what the big boys do with corporate tax evasion in other countries. Do you think any of the shareholders care that Apple or google is not paying there fair share of taxes in europe? they only care about the profits they generate by paying less taxes!

And you have a short memory.

Nvidia does this also when AMD released a part that is faster than theirs you have to lower price to meet the market. You cannot continue to charge MRSP when the competition releases a product that is better for less money.

Intel did the same thing when the Athlon 64 was faster than the pentium 4.

This is all standard practice in this industry.
 
Honestly, I would have preferred a counter-attack based on a product launch instead of dropping the price of an old, inefficient product.

You say that like they have a gpu just sitting on the shelf that they can roll out on the next NV screw up.

Its take years to produce and design a gpu.

There is a new gen of radeons I believe coming this year but we are not there yet, and rather them fully test it and get the drivers ready for launch then to just release and unfinished products because of a competitor screw up.
 
You say that like they have a gpu just sitting on the shelf that they can roll out on the next NV screw up.

Its take years to produce and design a gpu.

There is a new gen of radeons I believe coming this year but we are not there yet, and rather them fully test it and get the drivers ready for launch then to just release and unfinished products because of a competitor screw up.

I say it knowing about the Rx 300 series are coming, that the 290X has almost 1.5 years since its release and that NVIDIA has released two flagships (780 Ti and 980) meanwhile and a card that competes in both price and performance (970) after it.

I know it takes years, but that's why design, validation and manufacture are pipelined (different projects in each stage at a time) nowadays. No tech company completes this whole process generation after generation. In the case of AMD they have only the part of design, validation and testing because they don't manufacture. Mark my words: "NVIDIA will launch a 980 Ti almost right -less than 2 months- after AMD makes its move."

And we're not even talking about the energy-efficiency race, AMD seems to be focusing in raw-power only. Intel and NVIDIA's [at least] main focus on energy-efficiency must be the model for the whole electronic industry. Without that, microprocessors wouldn't kill once and for all the mainframes -paraphrasing [Intel's] Justin Rattner's words in a Computer History talk.
 
AMD dropping prices, tells me that nVidia even with the screw up is still selling their cards.
That's it in a nutshell. The GTX 970 is-it-4GB-or-3.5, plays out in enthusiast tech forums, but for the most part, buyers of any hardware don't really frequent tech sites and of those who do, many don't seem to have encountered the issue.
This is more about AMD going for the full court press to eke out any opportunity to arrest the slide in market share, and card partners waning orders for AMD-powered cards.
Mark my words: "NVIDIA will launch a 980 Ti almost right -less than 2 months- after AMD makes its move."
Probably a given at this stage that Nvidia has GM 200's rolling off TSMC's production line. Qualification/validation samples have been circulating for some time. Both AMD and Nvidia will launch their cards piggybacking the Windows 10 launch by all accounts.
At the present time, Nvidia has no need to launch GM 200 cards ( I'm sure they're waiting on 8Gbit chips to hit full stride in any case). New AMD product isn't due until Q2 (by AMD's own admission, and further confirmed by OcUK's Gibbo) which leaves plenty of time for stockpiling and binning.
And we're not even talking about the energy-efficiency race, AMD seems to be focusing in raw-power only.
That's a knock on effect of the length of time to takes to develop an architecture IMO. AMD pursued energy efficiency and performance-per-watt/mm^2 since they swept R600 under the rug. For all the success they had with Evergreen and Southern Islands, they still slipped further behind Nvidia, who parlayed the big chip policy into a very lucrative Tesla line of co-processors. AMD have copied a winning formula, only to see the graphics industry move in a mobile-centric direction with emphasis on performance-per-watt in the meantime...basically mirroring the CPU evolution. That's what happens when you react to markets rather than shape them.
 
Last edited:
That's a knock on effect of the length of time to takes to develop an architecture IMO. AMD pursued energy efficiency and performance-per-watt/mm^2 since they swept R600 under the rug. For all the success they had with Evergreen and Southern Islands, they still slipped further behind Nvidia, who parlayed the big chip policy into a very lucrative Tesla line of co-processors. AMD have copied a winning formula, only to see the graphics industry move in a mobile-centric direction with emphasis on performance-per-watt in the meantime...basically mirroring the CPU evolution. That's what happens when you react to markets rather than shape them.

I liked your last sentence, it summarizes many things. Waiting to see what to do without an idea of your own direction eventually gives you a delayed reaction.
 
I like how peeps go "its power hungry" how many of you look at your power bill when you get it and go "oh its high because of the graphics card" not one person would lol, my current pc runs sli 780tis because that was the build from the shop I ordered it from. Pc a friend bought off me had a 5850 got that in December 2009 still going strong, my other pc has an AMD card in it.I have to admit I am an AMD fan as my first pc in 1992 was an AMD 386dx66 it was a great pc fond memories.
 
That is not how a profitable business works.
That is not how some businesses (apparently AMD) work. AMD could do the same thing with giving temporary discounts. They don't have to seem wishy washy with their business decisions. Makes me wonder what else they are wishy washy on, not just their pricing.

I don't see nVidia continually changing their rates on a moments notice. They know their product will sell and stand firm on their pricing. I don't see Intel continually crashing their CPU pricing because of AMD. But then I wasn't watching competition during Intel's sub par performance days either.

You're joking, right? Nvidia routinely cuts prices in response to AMD product launches and perceived missteps. Such fanboyism is beneath you, Clifford.
 
I like how peeps go "its power hungry" how many of you look at your power bill when you get it and go "oh its high because of the graphics card" not one person would lol.
I tend to think power consumption comes with the territory with enthusiast grade graphics. At stock settings the only real consideration should be having a decent PSU.
Having said that, Hawaii's architecture does require some more careful planning if the user plans to overclock since pretty much everything in the chip is active all the time under load. GK 110 doesn't show the same power ramping in part because of the reduction in double precision SFU's in the 780/780Ti, and clock/power gating on the Titan/Titan Black ( choose 1:3 FP64 and the card downclocks to accommodate the increased power demand of the SFUs). The 970/980 of course has finer granularity still.
You're joking, right? Nvidia routinely cuts prices in response to AMD product launches and perceived missteps. Such fanboyism is beneath you, Clifford.
Both vendors cut prices, and both cut when an SKU is replaced in the hierarchy ( the GTX 780 price drop from $650 to $500 to allow the 780Ti to take its place), when an SKU nears end of life, and when the opposition launch a new(!) lineup. But AMD's price cuts also tend to include more wholesale pricing realignments across the whole range. Less so with the current range, but the HD 7000 series had numerous price cuts not allied with EoLs, incoming cards, or price cuts from the competition, and which I think was down more to trying to get a sales push in time for the quarterly financials.
 
Last edited:
I noticed today Ibuypower is no longer offering a 295x option. Last time I saw them drop the 780ti, it was because 980 was right around the corner. I'm thinking selling out of 295x and dropping price on 290x to move them shows they are getting really close to releasing R300x series.
 
I noticed today Ibuypower is no longer offering a 295x option. Last time I saw them drop the 780ti, it was because 980 was right around the corner. I'm thinking selling out of 295x and dropping price on 290x to move them shows they are getting really close to releasing R300x series.
It could also be that the 295X supply is naturally drying up everywhere (check the main outlets). As far as the price cuts are concerned it might be a little optimistic to think it signals a 300 series release. More likely it is because the inventory isn't moving, and AMD - their own projections forecasting a 15% revenue drop in Q1 2015 - will take any offered opportunity to stop the next quarterly earnings call looking like this
dumpster_fire0_standard_3520_zps2672dab2.jpg

AMD said exactly that in their last earnings call:
Since AMD sees necessity to reduce inventory in the Q1 2015 as its main task for the quarter, financial woes for the company will continue in the next several months. AMD expects its revenue in Q1 2015 to decrease 15 per cent sequentially (±3 per cent) to around $1.054 billion, a decline of 24.7 per cent from the same period a year ago. If AMD’s revenue drops to levels below $1.09 billion, then it will be AMD’s lowest quarter revenue in about ten years.
 
Meaning AMD could have been selling the card cheaper this whole time.

It probably does not.

Example: Suppose AMD can sell 100,000 R9 290Xs at $400 but at $300 they can sell 200,000 units.

If AMD prices the R9 290x at $400, they make $40,000,000 on sales of 100,000 units. If they price it at $300, they make $60,000,000 on sales of 200,000 units.

But if they first price it at $400 and sell 100,000 units and then after, say, six months price it at $300 and sell another 100,000, they make $40,000,000 + $30,000,000 = $70,000,000.

That $10,000,000 could be the difference between a profit and a loss.

The same sort of thing happens in other businesses like the book business where there often is a more expensive hardback book sold first, and then later a paperback is sold.

There are even cases where selling later at a loss per unit creates an overall profit.

Suppose it costs $325 to make an R9 290x card and it's predicted that 200,000 can be sold so 200,000 are made.

At $400/card, there's a net loss of $25,000,000 since 100,000 of the 200,000 cards won't sell. At $300/card, there's a loss of $5,000,000 since the sale of each card loses $50.

But first selling at $400/card and then later at $300/card gives a profit of $5,000,000.
 
Wonder when the price for the GTX 970 is gonna drop with all this bad PR. Looking at Negg I don't see the prices dropping and I would have thought they would by now. I would take a 970 for $200-225 in a firesale with it's 3.5 gb full speed memory and have no problem with it. Don't think they will drop them that far but I would love to see it. Just a thought.
 
I tend to think power consumption comes with the territory with enthusiast grade graphics. At stock settings the only real consideration should be having a decent PSU.
Having said that, Hawaii's architecture does require some more careful planning if the user plans to overclock since pretty much everything in the chip is active all the time under load. GK 110 doesn't show the same power ramping in part because of the reduction in double precision SFU's in the 780/780Ti, and clock/power gating on the Titan/Titan Black ( choose 1:3 FP64 and the card downclocks to accommodate the increased power demand of the SFUs). The 970/980 of course has finer granularity still.

Both vendors cut prices, and both cut when an SKU is replaced in the hierarchy ( the GTX 780 price drop from $650 to $500 to allow the 780Ti to take its place), when an SKU nears end of life, and when the opposition launch a new(!) lineup. But AMD's price cuts also tend to include more wholesale pricing realignments across the whole range. Less so with the current range, but the HD 7000 series had numerous price cuts not allied with EoLs, incoming cards, or price cuts from the competition, and which I think was down more to trying to get a sales push in time for the quarterly financials.
I have to adit these 780tis are awesome and yes I would buy Nvidia again in a flash with cards like this do I worry about power consumption no, it is such a small thing not worth the effort because lets face it fridges run 24/7 TVs go on for a long time so to me its pointless worrying about a card that might cost 50cents more for the day to run.
 
I returned my 970 yesterday for a full refund and will now buy the 290x, either way you slice it NVidia are in the wrong and its time this of rip off industry started to consider people as people and not just a walking £ or $ sign ready to be taken in by false claims or incorrect specifications no matter how small, its not that long ago that it was motherboards that went through it with the usb 3 problem, but it appears it dosent really matter as long as the consumer continues buying.
 
It probably does not.
Example: Suppose AMD can sell 100,000 R9 290Xs at $400 but at $300 they can sell 200,000 units.
Firstly, AMD doesn't sell consumer cards - AIBs, AICs, and OEMs do.
If AMD prices the R9 290x at $400, they make $40,000,000 on sales of 100,000 units. If they price it at $300, they make $60,000,000 on sales of 200,000 units.
Except the bulk of card sales come within the first few months of launch. Bear in mind that the MSRP is just that, it is the recommended pricing by the vendor. As the SKU ages and becomes harder to sell and eventually goes EoL, the vendor will often offer lower bulk rates to AIB/AIC/OEMs and cover rebates (and write-downs) on unsold/EoL stock.

As a point of interest, here's the cost breakdown from cards of a couple of generations back. This is manufacturing cost only, so doesn't take into account packaging, shipping, amortized warranty costs, AIB/AIC/OEM profit etc. Principle differences now would be higher overall manufacturing costs (higher density and more expensive RAM, higher GPU cost for the 28nm process, and slightly higher voltage regulation cost ( chokes, VRM, caps) - the disparity in these RAM prices below comes from the number of IC's per SKU and whether it is GDDR3 or 5), with MSRP's staying more or less static as far as AMD is concerned.
OZihVPg.jpg


In this particular case, it was estimated back in November that AMD's $300+ card segment was being outsold by Nvidia at a rate of four to one. For AMD that would loosely equate to 180,000-200,000 cards in the last three months (R9 290's depending upon SKU and geographic distribution location, 290X's, a handful of 295X's, and most of the FirePro lines).
 
Last edited:
I will say this my personal opinion is to me this:be it AMD or Nvidia if either has the best performing card at time I am buying,then they will get my money, I will not quibble over a few cents more to power the thing up only 2 the things matter 1 how noisy is it and 2how does it perform. My 780s are really quiet and they go soooo good money well spent.
 
Wonder when the price for the GTX 970 is gonna drop with all this bad PR. Looking at Negg I don't see the prices dropping and I would have thought they would by now. I would take a 970 for $200-225 in a firesale with it's 3.5 gb full speed memory and have no problem with it. Don't think they will drop them that far but I would love to see it. Just a thought.

The advertised performance hasn't changed from day 1. They have no real reason to do that. Some people in Anandtech were arguing they paid for the advertised specs, when actually that level of detailed specs aren't published to the wide public to be found easily. Besides, people complaining don't even know what are the ROPs or what are they for; they only see numbers.

In that case, people should be complaining for false advertising towards both AMD (295X2) and NVIDIA (Titan Z) because they advertise 8GB and 12GB of memory respectively when only half is the effective memory addressable by the GPUs at any given time. Noone's asking them to lower those prices for that matter.
 
There are 2 reasons why I would not buy an AMD graphics card.

I. It is a power hungry monster. Even if they don't say it, that remains True. Had experienced it in the past.
ii. There is no support for Active 3D like in Nvidia. Almost all others are using passive 3D but after using active, any sane IT professional will agree that active is far better / superior.

So Nvidia will rule at for some time & maybe in future AMD may come closer but to overtake Nvidia, it will be quite a job for team AMD.

Viraf P Chinoy
 
Meaning AMD could have been selling the card cheaper this whole time.

AMD needs to stand more firmly in their business decisions. Changing prices on a whim every time the wind blows, shows lack of confidence in their product to sell itself.
Not necessarily. They probably have cut their standard margin and subsidise this price point in order to try to poach NV customers.
 
Back