While we all want shiny new faster things, the 290(x), 295x and 285 being the last AMD releases make sense.
When 290(x) launched, the next big game engine was Frostbite 3, and they were prepared for that, and had Mantle to throw in as a "hey look what can be done" freebie for gamers.
GCN 1.2 and 1.1 cards were the line in the sand before a re-design to GCN 2.0 or whatever is next.
This had to be known when 290(x) was released; the calculated risk was that they were going to stay competitive with the games / engines on the market.
I am thinking the coming 300 series is a complete product stack overhaul, for reduced power consumption and feature addition.
Are those canadian prices? Bit lower at newegg in the US. I paid $309 before taxed and free shipping for a 290x a few weeks ago, it hit $280 before it sold out. There are a couple in that range still, non-x a bit less. I notice some 970's way cheaper than they were too, pretty early on to be cutting prices so much.
To be honest you can't complain about the 970's 3.5 GB (yes you can complain about Nvidia's sneakiness but not about the 3.5 GB limit) if you accept that a card ~50% faster than a 290X has the same amount of vram as the 290x.
If 3.5 GB on the 970 isn't enough then 4 GB on a card ~50-60% faster isn't enough either.
There are 2 issues with the 970. 1) The RAM. Not only is there 500Gb less full speed RAM than we were told, the last full gig shares resources and is crippled once you get past the 3.5Gb. It's barely better than the 3gig designs it replaced. It's a broken design that's hardly any faster then the generation it replaces. This is more like a next gen CPU performance increase than a GPU but people think it's the bomb.
2) nVidia lied and then lied again trying to cover up the first lie. They've never been honest since day one. First they told us made a mistake and when people didn't buy that, now it's a feature. I can't believe that people are still trying to defend this.
I think AMD pushing the 300 series' release back until it can clear inventory of the 200 series is potentially a bad sign, and a forecast that the top end 300 series GPU (Fiji) does not perform that much better than Hawaii.
Here is my thinking. The only reason the release of the 390x/390 would interfere with the sales of the 290x/290 is if the 390x/390 is released in the same price ranges or performance ranges as the 290x/290. If, for example, the 390x is a larger die with expensive HBM and a fancy water cooler, and comes in at 50% faster than the 290x, there is no way AMD will sell that part any near the price range where the 290x sits. Under that scenario, the 390x likely comes in at $500 or more, because it would beat a 980 while maintaining similar price/performance as the 290x.
If I can sell the 390x at $500 or $550, and I could release it now (i.e. barring supply constraints or other issues keeping AMD from getting the 390x to the market in March), releasing a part at that price with that kind of performance would put it in a different market than the 290x. People who want top tier will buy the 390x, people looking for mid-range bargains would keep buying the 290x.
On the other hand, if the 390x is not such a great jump in performance/feature set over the 290x, then bringing the 390x to market now would encroach on the 290x's price/performance market segment.
This thinking, of course, wouldn't apply to the release of a new mid-range ASIC that would perform like Hawaii but at a much lower TDP and better feature set. I can understand why AMD would hold off releasing such a new card until inventory of 290/290x depletes. See, for example, the GTX570/GTX660 situation RussianSensation brought up.
My hope, of course, is that the real reason AMD has apparently delayed the introduction of the 390/390x is that it anticipates really high demand because it has a really competitive product, and it cannot meet its expected demand due to supply issues (e.g. securing enough HBM memory). So, it is building inventory of the 390x/390 over these next two months.
Exactly. There is no way AMD would be holding back if they had at least one card ready to roll.The 390X isn't released because its just NOT ready.
You seem to have a problem with how people perceive the 970, and that is sad. If the card fits people's needs, why do you care if they think its "the bomb"?
This has nothing to do with how the 970 performs, so this isn't an issue with the 970, more an issue you have with Nvidia.
Yet another AMD thread that goes off-topic to talk about the 970 issue. It'll get locked and people will complain that another AMD thread was locked by those pesky "Nvidia fanboys".
The 390X isn't released because its just NOT ready.
It has been a while since any new performance "leaks" for the 300-series has happened, I wonder if those past leaks were even close to what the 390(X) is now.
There's no reason to hold back on the 390X just to wait for the rest of the new stack. Staggered releases are quite normal in fact. That excuse or rumor does not fly.
The 390X isn't released because its just NOT ready.
That... wasn't my post...
Or if they was ever real. The same site got its supposed cut and uncut GM200.
There's no reason to hold back on the 390X just to wait for the rest of the new stack. Staggered releases are quite normal in fact. That excuse or rumor does not fly.
The 390X isn't released because its just NOT ready.
Imagine working at a factory where AMD & NV products are being assembled side by side. I wonder if workers have to wear red & green hats to better manage them. I think team red would be severely out-numbered these days & would feel quite unease at lunch time.
Also, surely its not a surprise to expect cut down GM200 SKUs?
Imagine working at a factory where AMD & NV products are being assembled side by side. I wonder if workers have to wear red & green hats to better manage them. I think team red would be severely out-numbered these days & would feel quite unease at lunch time.
Also, surely its not a surprise to expect cut down GM200 SKUs?
You aren't making sense Vaga. If you had 390X ready to go to sell at >$500, you would released it yesterday to slow down the hurt NV is dishing into them with 970/980.
Then 3 months later when the rest of the lineup (mid-range, low-end) is ready you launch those.
There's zero reason to hold back a product when you desperately need a new launch, particularly at a market segment (high-end) that doesn't impact your old-gen products on price.
There are 2 issues with the 970. 1) The RAM. Not only is there 500Gb less full speed RAM than we were told, the last full gig shares resources and is crippled once you get past the 3.5Gb. It's barely better than the 3gig designs it replaced. It's a broken design that's hardly any faster then the generation it replaces. This is more like a next gen CPU performance increase than a GPU but people think it's the bomb. 2) nVidia lied and then lied again trying to cover up the first lie. They've never been honest since day one. First they told us they made a mistake and when people didn't buy that, now it's a feature. I can't believe that people are still trying to defend this.
At 4 GB even 3-4 years down the road games will be playable. However, settings will have to be turned down.
If its 4 GB things really may be iffy at 4k on future games, especially with crossfire power.
That speaks to the value of having your ducks in a row for launch. Both the 7970 and 290 series were fantastic hardware. Particularly the 290 series, had it launched earlier and with better launch day cooling things might have went astoundingly well for them. Having the benefit of hindsight I actually wish I had of went with 290X Lightnings rather than 780 Classifieds (again had they launched earlier), mostly due to the superior multi-gpu scaling. I'm hoping they continue this and respond quickly to new game releases with the upcoming 390 series and I'll give it serious consideration rather than automatically rolling green this round.That's exactly it. The initial launch reviews of R9 290/290X reference cards (and 7970Ghz) forever tarnished their reputation with most of the market viewing them a hot, loud and power hungry. R9 290 was an amazing value card against 780/780Ti. Just look back in hindsight and R9 290 was $400 vs. $650 780 and $700 780Ti! Even after 780 dropped to $500 it was still a bad value and had just 3GB of VRAM. Today it's obvious as ever. It took NV a whopping 11 months to beat an R9 290 by 5-7% for $70 less with a 970. If R9 290 was an NV card and it took AMD a whopping 11 months to beat it by 5-7% for $70 less, most PC gamers would laugh at such an effort by AMD. Yet, reviewers and gamers praised NV. Talk about marketing spin. In the amount of time that passed since R9 290 came out at $399, 970 hardly changed the landscape for gaming in terms of actual performance but because of how well it was marketed by reviewers and by reviewers bashed the reference R9 290, the 290 seems like a total write-off in comparison all this time. It's unbelievable that it took NV nearly a year to barely beat a $400 AMD card by less than 10% for $330. Other than HDMI 2.0 and lower power usage, 970 brought nothing to the table in terms of moving the performance at the sub-$400 price level. In fact, most after-market R9 290 cards were already selling for $350-375 for several months prior to 970's launch. Therefore, AMD's $399 MSRP was long outdated.
Even when after-market R9 290 cards came out with performance = 290X, almost no one bought them for $400 still as gamers kept buying 770 4GB, 780 and 780Ti. The damage of a terrible reference cooler has been done. Now reviewers won't be able to talk about the card running at 95C while operating at obnoxious noise levels. I still think the usual NV-favoured sites will pimp 6GB of VRAM by downplaying 4GB on the 390X, despite not even mentioning 2GB as a bottleneck on a 960 on day 1 in their glowing reviews, and will try to spin WC as a negative by implying that "AMD needed to resort to WC because air cooling wasn't sufficient to cool their cards" instead of "AMD is working towards improving a reference cooling solution in delivering superior temperatures and noise levels which means the evolution of cooling in the enthusiast segment and moving from air to water". I also think huge fuss will be made over 50W of extra power usage but the pricing delta will be more or less ignored because Price/performance seems to have fallen out of favour in terms of PR/marketing vs. perf/watt.
I would go far as to say that 4GB VRAM will last from now all the way to the next console generation for single-screen 4K or lower.