MSI's pricing for R9 290/290X - OUCH

[crfrank]

Looks like the R9's are going to be wayyy more expensive than any of us had thought/been planning on:

http://videocardz.com/46558/amd-radeon-r9-290x-r9-290-european-pricing-unveiled

MSI's pricing for their cards is basically 649 Euros for 290X and 519 Euros for the 290 - so the prices we've been seeing of 730 US for the BF4 Edition (which a lot of us have pre-ordered) is probably going to work out as 700+ Euros/Pounds - WAYYY more than what we'd been hoping for. I guess early adopters are getting stung again... Ah well...

 

[crfrank]

Where are you getting £700 from? It'll be more like £550 and £450 for the 290x and 290, respectively.

Remember, the £550 you're quoting for the 290X is for the bare card, not the Limited Edition BF4 Bundle that they will happily charge a premium for.... Plus we usually get screwed on the conversion rate - UK customers usually pay more for electronics than anyone else in Europe. 650 Euros is about £550 as a straight conversion, plus say £55 for the game itself, plus whatever 'premium' the companies think they can get away with for the BF4 edition. So I may have guesstimated a bit high - maybe the bundle will be in the £625-£650 range - but still way over the £400-£450 we were hoping it would be - particularly given comments I saw from people at GPU14 (like Kyle Bennett from HardOCP) which seemed to make out that the AMD guys there were laughing at the prices being quoted on some websites at the time saying it was going to be a 600 dollar card - the inference being that 600 was on the high side...

 

[crfrank]

Do you really think its going to cost 650-700? You can buy 2 280x cards for that and surely those would be a lot faster than one 290x?

Faster, yes - but without the future-proofing that the R9 series have as they are just rebadged 79xx series GPUs...

 

[crfrank]

http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop...110040015014_BTF3729P.shtml&order_id=!ORDERID

Is the $591.62 one

That's £375.30 - would be around £450 with VAT as a straight conversion, plus say the usual +£50 for us Brits (and the dodgy US>Euro/Pound conversion that companies seem to use) so around £500 - about what we were all hoping it would be.

 

[crfrank]

The 280x coolers seem to be way better. Quieter and cooler than previous cards.

That's good to know - my reference 6970 sounds a bit like a hair dryer when it really gets going lol - and the air coming out the back is nearly as hot