AMD Releases “Affordable” Radeon R9 290 for US$399
Following AMD’s most extravagant GPU launch in a long time, the company has launched a slightly pared down edition of the Radeon R9 290X in the form of the Radeon R9 290. With a suggested retail price of just US$399, it’s quite a bit more affordable than the company’s top offering at US$549, the AMD Radeon R9 290X.
Fortunately, it retains much of the processing prowess and features that the Radeon R9 290X boasted, including AMD TrueAudio technology, AMD Mantle API, 4K gaming and ribbon-less XDMA based AMD CrossFire among others like the improved GCN core. What’s different from the “X” edition is a slightly reduced number of stream processing units and a tad lowered clock speeds. This sounds like a great option for those who can’t reach for the R9 290X variant.
This will certainly put pressure on NVIDIA’s recently revised price point for the GeForce GTX 780 at US$499 as the GeForce GTX 770 (US$329) is already competing against the Radeon R9 280X currently.