A really good price tag! Almost close to the U$579 Msrp.
The Sapphire Radeon R9 290X is the future in gaming and features up to a 1000MHz core clock, 4096MB 512-bit GDDR5 memory, PCI-E 3.0, 2x DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Backed by a 2 year Sapphire warranty.
Delivery $13 approx or local pick up available:
Warehouse Address
18-20 Glenvale Crescent
Mulgrave VIC 3170
Australia
It clearly says in the checkout that if you order through bank deposit, and the item sells out before payment is cleared that you lose your stock…
I know this, but I'm warning others. I think it is wrong they do not provide a fee-free payment option that allows you to reserve stock
With that price, you could also get a non-reference 290….
hmm decisions decisions
Do your research… might be a good price for it but I hear the reference 290x cooler is pretty atrocious for noise and cooling capacity. This is probably only good if you're going to water-cool the thing.
It's quite noisy and can throttle under tremendous (unrealistic) load but it's not horrible.
Personally I'd pick up a 290 (not X) with a non-reference cooler though.
It's incredibly loud if you crank it up, it's quite noisy otherwise.
Yes, I have one.
No it doesn't bother me, but it may bother others, especially those who don't use headphones often.
Trust the reviewers who actually look for micro-stuttering in their reviews - do not trust FPS…
by Scott Wasson — 6:08 PM on September 8, 2011
plus that's to do with crossfire and is partially fixed with newer drivers
It is most evident in multi-GPU setups, but it did/does exist in single GPU setups too….
At the time of that article - it existed in AMD single GPU setups but not Nvidia single GPU setups.
I guess you get what you pay for…
I made the opposite paradigm shift, for reasons I detailed here:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/121757#comment-1670643
I mean, when I bagged a 7970 for $300 last year, it was basically getting GTX 780 performance in most of the games I was playing, for literally ~300 dollars less; and that I cannot call a bad decision by any measure.
I was honest and mentioned that the Tahiti chip was basically pushed to breaking point by AMD's pursuit of the E-Peen crown and as such, you did have some widely-reported quality control issues, but I can overlook them because in my case (ending up with a card with a fairly good ASIC and very good OC'ing potential) it's just a matter of turning on V-Sync for me:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/121265#comment-1667158
I will probably go back to NVidia when the time comes around to build my next rig, but right now, people calling AMD a "total write-off", "the Dodo of the GPU Industry", "dead men walking" are deluding themselves I have to say.
Having used ATI cards back in the day like 9550 Pro's and using AMD cards now, not to mention a slew of NVidia models in between; it's just one big merry-go-round of illusion. They do the same shit for roughly the same prices. In reality the entire industry is super anti-competitive and monopolistic and needs far more innovation and less stifling regurgitation.
Competition and diversity in consumer products is a good thing and right now we have far too little of it.
Do AMD cards still micro-stutter too?
Everything micro-stutters; the issue is inherent in the variability of core manufacturing (even millisecond differences between two cores are enough to give you an FPS that goes up and down like the stock exchange), PCI-E bus lane architecture and SLI/CF bridges, not the brand or model of the cards themselves:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/113114#comment-1541451
I had some terrible micro-stuttering with my previous GTX 460's:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/121923#comment-1673550
But that's besides the point, multi-GPU gaming is not really a consumer-ready technology and never has been and more to the point, there is no developer or producer who gives a toss about it, hence any short-term savings you make are negated by the long-term disappointment you face from game after game that refuses to scale well your multi-GPU setup.
The exception to this rule is back when 3dfx, who invented SLI (later bought by NVidia as with everything that 3dfx had of value), had Voodoo2 cards so efficient in parallel-processing mode that they there were limited by CPU bottlenecking, something that has rarely been replicated since in the video game industry; these ancient benchmarks are testament to that and show almost no frame-rate dips or jumps in tested games of that era: http://www.gribbsy.com/oldsite/slibench.htm)
Sure micro-stuttering happened on your GTX 460's - how many generations old are we talking though?
I am talking about current and 1 gen old AMD cards having a massive problem with micro stuttering…
I am talking about current and 1 gen old AMD cards having a massive problem with micro stuttering…
You're kind of making mountains of out molehills. What you're describing was largely driver-induced and the last I heard of it was August last year:
http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/58485-amd-delivers-frame…
From what I can see as well, the issue is reported predominantly amongst budget vendor cards like Powercolor.
Me personally, I haven't seen micro-stuttering on my 7970 and given that I can pick it out incredibly well after a few years of trying to game on GTX 460's that stuttered more Colin Firth in The King's Speech, I think I know what I'm talking about.
Dude stop being such an Nvidia / Intel Fanboi, AMD does not price gouge and its because of AMD that you small time company trying to go againts the big boys. If you don't like then don't try to undermine.
"Dude" I just want the Ozbargainers spending their hard earned here to be aware of some possible issues they may not know about.
If they know about them and go ahead, great.
AMD cards are great bang for buck but you want to know what you are buying…
$400+ on a video card is a big investment…
Also AMD / ATI combined value used to be much higher than poor little Nvidia - but because Nvidia made good products and the former made crap, that has changed over time…
"my mum" ftw
The 290 is $499 at MSY etc……… 290X isn't worth $100 more.
Specs are maybe 5% better…. That's $25 worth only
5% better based reviews of press sample 290s…
Retail 290s are about 10% slower than the press samples…
PLUS Postage
PLUS Surcharge if you pay with anything but bank deposit.
(I once purchased an item and paid with bank deposit, 3 days later I received a call letting me know they had received my bank deposit but had sold the item to someone who purchased after me but paid with credit card - Needless to say I strictly shop at MSY now)