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AMD's Radeon R9 290 Delivers 290X Performance For $150 Less
crookedvulture writes "The back and forth battle for PC graphics supremacy is quite a thing to behold. Last week, Nvidia cut GeForce prices in response to the arrival of AMD's latest Radeons. That move caused AMD to rejigger its plans for the new Radeon R9 290, which debuted today with a higher default fan speed and faster performance than originally planned. This $400 card offers almost identical performance to AMD's flagship R9 290X for $150 less. Indeed, it's often faster than Nvidia's $1000 GeForce Titan. But the 290 also consumes a lot more power, and its fan spins up to 49 decibels under load. Fortunately, the acoustic profile isn't too grating. Radeon R9 290 isn't the only new graphics card due this week, either. Nvidia is scheduled to unveil its GeForce GTX 780 Ti on November 7, and that card could further upset the balance at the high end of the GPU market. As AMD and Nvidia trade blows, PC gamers seem to be the ones who benefit."
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I read the headline as a this new card delivering 290 times the performance of something else.
Trolling is a art,
seriously, it could only have been worse if there was "ON SALE NOW!" in the summary. then again, there is "Nvidia cut GeForce prices" so meh.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The real story is a $400 AMD card can perform as well as or better than a $1000 Nvidia one....
If they tested all the cards in the same case, then they did nothing wrong in their testing. Maybe it wouldn't be 57dB for the 290 in another PC case, but it would be lower for all the other cards too. Perhaps it wouldn't necessarily be a linear drop across all the cards, but you can't simply say their choice of case invalidates their findings that this card is REALLY loud compared to other cards. Plenty of people will own cases with "horrible acoustic profile[s]".
That's kinda how all consumer (and even most non-consumer) stuff works.
You have the enthusiasts who for whatever reason have a stronger interest in the technology and are willing to spend significantly more for slightly better. They fund the R&D until it makes it down to the cheaper mass consumer pricing.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with this. I for one was an early adopter of SSDs. I bought one (then another) when 30G was still a big deal. I knew in a few years you'd get way more capacity for way cheaper.. but I didn't care, it was something I wanted to play around with.
If someone has the money to spend and is going to get enjoyment out of paying $1000 for a card where a $200 or so card would probably do, so what... their money, their hobby.
People who play at a higher resolution than 1080P. I currently game using three Dell 30" monitors, so I have a total of 12 million pixels to push, which is 50% higher than 4K. I could use a pair of 290X cards in crossfire, once they get after market coolers. Yes, I know I'm not a typical user, but you did ask, "who the hell spends $400+ on a video card". The answer would be me and people like me. Considering that I have $3,000 worth of monitors on my desk, $1,000 for a pair of 290X cards in crossfire is not really all that crazy.
From a marketplace that used to be served by 6 competing vendors into a duopoly marketplace that is currently served by only 2 vendors --- the pace of innovation has slowed to a crawl.
We're most definitely not in a duopoly marketplace at the moment. There are currently only 2 companies offering high performance 3D consumer priced cards, but there are other companies in the graphics business. The most popular graphics card used by people using Steam is the Intel HD Graphics 3000, for example. Matrox is still about, too, but not competing in consumer 3D.
To be honest, I can't really remember a time in which there were more than 3 (possibly 4) major players in the high end consumer 3D market. Matrox dabbled, but never got close to a cost efficient gaming card, really IMO... the closest they came was the G400 IIRC. That was the era when you could possibly claim there were 4 competing vendors. Soon after, Matrox left the market to concentrate on 2D, and 3dfx dissapeared up their own arse. I'm not sure who the other 2 you are alluding to are.... SiS, VIA?
Noise measurements (all noise measurements, not just those related to PC hardware) are always suspect:
What is the ambient noise level?
What is the test environment? (Is it a well-isolated anechoic chamber, a common desk with a computer near the corner of the room, or is it on the deck of a boat, or on the back of a llama? It makes a huge difference.)
What is the distance between the rig under test and the measurement rig with the microphone?
Is this test rig calibrated? (To what standard?)
What are the properties of the noise? (if it is 57dBa at only 1.5kHz, it is very annoying to me. If it's 57dBa only at 25kHz, it is annoying only to my dog.)
Is the noise different in differing directions?
How do you know?
Did you measure it?
It's all important, lest the resultant number be absolutely unimportant.
Also: Meh. "This blue car sounds better than that other blue car!" is roughly as accurate as a non-descrip "noise measurement" of computer hardware.
Kid-proof tablet..