While the launch of AMD's R9 290X flagship was a mere two weeks ago, AMD has now officially launched the new R9 290 which comes quite close to the R9 290X, in terms of performance, but hits the retail/e-tail at a suggested retail price of US $399.

Based on the same Hawaii GPU as the R9 290X, but with 2560 stream processors and somewhat lower clocks, the R9 290 also features same amount of memory paired up with the same 512-bit memory interface. While the R9 290X was clocked at 1000MHz for the GPU, AMD pulled the R9 290 down to 947MHz for the GPU while 4GB of GDDR5 memory remained at 1250MHz (5.0GHz effective).

It also brings the same trade-offs, as in order to get the performance up to a level that is close to the R9 290X, including around 300W TDP and the same cooler which should have been much better. Thankfully, we will see custom cooled designs from partners sometime at the end of this month which should make the R9 290 even more appealing.

The power consumption is yet another problem and while it is decent in idle on a single screen, high load TDP and high idle in Blu-ray and multi-screen setups are definitely too high. It also has a quite high noise which shows that sacrificing cooler speed in order to make just a tad bit faster graphics card is not always a good way to go.

While cutting the specifications of the Hawaii GPU from 2816 stream processors down to 2560 and reducing the GPU speed down to 948MHz, the most significant cut was on the price, down by incredible US $399 ex. VAT. While most expected the US $459 price tag, AMD has surprised once again pulling the R9 290 down to a level that makes it US $100 cheaper than the GTX 780.

In any case, it is still a pretty good graphics card with quite impressive performance and we certainly can't wait to see some impressive custom solutions from partners that should definitely get it to a completely new level.




Source: AMD.com.