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Radeon R9 290X Launch Date Revealed?

btarunr

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At a local press gathering in Turkey, AMD revealed the launch date of its next high-end product, the Radeon R9 290X. The press NDA over the card will end on October 15, 2013, at 12:01 AM EST (Berlin time). This NDA expiry time was disclosed in the slides that AMD showed the press. There's always the possibility that the NDA expiry date doesn't match market availability. It could merely mark NDA expiry for the press to post reviews of their AMD reference-design R9 290X (the only kind of R9 290X that will be initially available). AMD is handling R9 290X launch much in the same way NVIDIA handled the GTX TITAN, in that there won't be non-reference design cards in the foreseeable future, with the exception of cards with factory-fitted full-coverage water-blocks.



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Only a little over a couple weeks...I'm anxious to see what the price actually drops at.
 
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there won't be non-reference design cards in the foreseeable future, with the exception of cards with factory-fitted full-coverage water-blocks.

:ohwell:
 

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I think it's a good thing as other company's with start making 3rd party coolers for them and less chance being locked to the one on your card.
 

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The more and more I read about this card, the more I am unimpressed.
 
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The more and more I read about this card, the more I am unimpressed.
If the design stays as reference then:
1. The AIB's are just going to love AMD. No Windforce, No DirectCuII, No Lightning, No Vapor-X or IceQ.
2. With no AIB factory specials that pretty much means as soon as the hoopla from the initial reviews is over the card won't be gaining much in the way of PR except for game graphics performance reviews...much the same as Titan.
3. If that blower fan and shroud are going to be the face of the card through its production run would it have killed AMD to put some effort into making the card look less generic. A dual or triple fan shroud along the lines of the ACX, DCII, TwinFrozr, or Windforce can't be that hard to engineer surely. I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.
 

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If the design stays as reference then:
1. The AIB's are just going to love AMD. No Windforce, No DirectCuII, No Lightning, No Vapor-X or IceQ.
2. With no AIB factory specials that pretty much means as soon as the hoopla from the initial reviews is over the card won't be gaining much in the way of PR except for game graphics performance reviews...much the same as Titan.
3. If that blower fan and shroud are going to be the face of the card through its production run would it have killed AMD to put some effort into making the card look less generic. A dual or triple fan shroud along the lines of the ACX, DCII, TwinFrozr, or Windforce can't be that hard to engineer surely. I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.

780 and Titan coolers are FTW. :rockout:

But really, I don't like the look of any of the new AMD cards in terms of aesthetics. Also All the cards look to be rebrands but 2 of them. the 290 and 290x.
 
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-= snip =-
in that there won't be non-reference design cards in the foreseeable future, with the exception of cards with factory-fitted full-coverage water-blocks.

if they restrict removing the cooler,than i might be waiting for AIB custom cooler or ditch it for 290 non X.
 
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That just dumb. While i do like exhausting coolers so the case stays cool, but those damn centrifugal fans start to rattle after 1 month if you use fan profiles like i do (very silent on idle, moderate noise on load at around 75°C). Usless. Current WindForce 3X works in the same way and it's still working perfectly.
 
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Hmmm....

The Titan-ish restrictions on the card is a downer. To be honest, I haven't been impressed with the reference coolers from AMD, hopefully they will improve that especially if the restrictions are true.
 

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I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.

At far as my 6870s are concerned, one is reference and the other is a TwinFrozr. When they're clean, they both perform just as well. At really high overclocks with a lot of voltage, the reference design cools it a little better, but only by a few degrees. The real difference is that the TwinFrozr is a lot quieter than the reference design. By exhausting the air out from the back of the GPU makes sure that the GPU can stay cool, regardless of how good the airflow is in the case. Some cases have really poor airflow and exhausting the air itself is the best way to make sure it stays cool regardless of the thermal situation it is put in because the TwinFrozr, for the most part, recycles the air inside the case.

I'm not saying that one is better than the other, it just depends on the conditions imho.
 
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AMD is handling R9 290X launch much in the same way NVIDIA handled the GTX TITAN, in that there won't be non-reference design cards in the foreseeable future
I don't know if such a "blurb" is worth a lot of discussion, like Titan and even the 7970 release, both companies feel it is the best way to keep rumors and leaks to a minimum. The 7970 released and it was like end Feb-March before AIB partners started showing the custom stuff. I think the words "foreseeable future" need clarification for both probability of translation or interpretation. Let's hope AMD better quantifies the statement before the 15th.

Now if such news is accurate, AMD MUST deliver an exceptional blower reference cooler, at least as efficient and hushed as the Titan. If they don't and then hold-back on partners' offering customs that would be an appalling play by them. Do I care that reference coolers aren't always the utmost, no! Do I believe AMD should spend tons of R&D or impede launch or escalate the price on something its’ partners are there to add value with, heck no!

Traditionally it's been a concession most first adopters have to weigh/decide, or wait a few weeks to see what AIB offer. That said if AMD is holding back from letting partners release within reason time-frame, AMD must deliver a cooler that is not wrought with compromise.
 
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So, thought I remember them saying at the hawaii marketing fest that preorders would be taken starting Oct 3.

If the cards aren't release until Oct 15, who in their right mind would order one based on the information now available?
 
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So, thought I remember them saying at the hawaii marketing fest that preorders would be taken starting Oct 3.

If the cards aren't release until Oct 15, who in their right mind would order one based on the information now available?

Not this guy. AMD seems rather disorganized. I'll wait for reviews.
 
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Not this guy. AMD seems rather disorganized. I'll wait for reviews.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

What prizes do we have for our winner?
 
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No after market cards is really bad especially if priced at $600. There are quite a few GTX780 at around $660 which are faster than Titan out of the box and which are for sale since many months now. Add to this the fact that pre-order starts without reviews (I wonder if people will be able to know the price by then?!), the fact than "mantle" which supposedly will help 290X best Titan in BF4 will drop sometime in December (long after the dust will settle over the reviews) and all becomes a bit disappointing.
 
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If that blower fan and shroud are going to be the face of the card through its production run would it have killed AMD to put some effort into making the card look less generic. A dual or triple fan shroud along the lines of the ACX, DCII, TwinFrozr, or Windforce can't be that hard to engineer surely. I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.

There's really no in-between to reference and non reference. Adding more fans as you suggested would be equivalent to AMD themselves making it non reference.

The whole point of the blower fan design is to place one fan at the end that blows the exhaust out the back of the case. You can't put more than one fan on a GPU without the added ones being propeller fans that just dissipate vs direct heat, which would just disrupt the airflow of the blower fan, limiting it's ability to exhaust the heat. So at that point you'd be better off just making them ALL prop fans with a non ref HS design.

So ref or non ref, and I prefer a good non ref btw, there's really only one or the other.

On a side note, an interesting and relating bit of trivia. I once asked EVGA if they'd ever make any non ref cooled video cards. At that time they said they had no plans to. Shortly after, they launched their first non ref cards. I then asked about one of the new models that was non ref, to see if they'd sent out any samples for review. The guy I spoke to insisted it would have roughly the same performance as their ref card, despite my suggesting their claimed 20c cooler temps might make it more OCable. His answer was that they only refer to stock speeds, making it clear they don't care about what is said regarding OC ability in reviews. Perhaps because it varies from card to card. EVGA is very conservative in stating their specs after all.

Anyways, regarding ref vs non ref, obviously non ref has proven to be cooler (and quieter). I think the only reason they launch cards like these ref only is they need to be sure they'll get enough orders before they commit to the vendors that want to build such types, and that in turn can depend on the yields they (Nvidia and AMD) get with the chips. That might also mean AMD will authorize non ref designs much sooner than Nvidia on their Titan, because it will probably be priced a lot lower knowing them. Then again, AMD's customers are used to low prices, so it will depend on how low they can offer it at launch, AND how good their yields are of course.

We're getting to the point now where between the die size and sheer power of these chips, the yield issue alone is more significant than it used to be. They're going to reach a saturation point with die shrinking unless the chip manufacturers can somehow make the process easier. I know Intel invested heavily in the use of Hafnium, and AMD even mocked their use of it once, but we all know Intel is the king of die shrinking.
 
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MxPhenom 216

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Though I don't really get why both Nvidia and AMD are going reference only with the Titan and 290X, there's really no in-between to reference and non reference. Adding more fans as you suggested would be equivalent to AMD themselves making it non reference.

The whole point of the blower fan design is to place one fan at the end that blows the exhaust out the back of the case. You can't put more than one fan on a GPU without the added ones being propeller fans that just dissipate vs direct heat, which would just disrupt the airflow of the blower fan, limiting it's ability top exhaust the heat.

So ref or non ref, and I prefer a good non ref btw, there's really only one or the other.

Sort of would have to agree. I mainly prefer reference do to the wider range of water blocks to choose from. Kind of why I got a reference 780 on launch day rather wait for non reference variants.
 
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We're getting to the point now where between the die size and sheer power of these chips, the yield issue alone is more significant than it used to be. They're going to reach a saturation point with die shrinking unless the chip manufacturers can somehow make the process easier. I know Intel invested heavily in the use of Hafnium, and AMD even mocked their use of it once, but we all know Intel is the king of die shrinking.

I suspect that as process advancement slows down the there will be a permanent move toward two GPU generations on the same silicon process; the initial one right after a shrink being with small dies and the one later in the process's life being with large dies. This allows manufacturers to avoid making large dies early in the life of a manufacturing process when defects are the most common.

Case in point: Think of what NVidia did. They had lots of trouble getting GF100 (a huge die) to work in the early life of 40nm, and they similarly had to cancel the huge GK100 on 28nm and wait for GK110 a year later. AMD has never released a huge die early in the life of a process, and I suspect it's exactly for that reason. The last huge die AMD/ATI released was R600, and that was made on a pretty old (at the time) 80nm process while the smaller chips in the 2000 series were based on the new (at the time) 65nm.

My prediction is that with their experiences on 40nm and 28nm both AMD and NVidia will initally favor small dies on 20nm to avoid defects. This will mean in 2014/2015 the AMD Rx 300 series & NVidia 800 series being only about 20% faster than the AMD Rx 200 and Nvidia 700 series, Then in 2015/2016 the AMD Rx 400 and Nvidia 900 series will be released with big dies on 20nm resulting in another 20% performance improvement. Everyone skipping upgrading this generation expecting a 50% performance improvement next generation is fooling themselves. Those days are over.

I think this decidedly marks a trend toward marketing based on features rather than performance, much like AMD and Intel have done in the CPU space, and toward an increasing focus on software optimization to improve performance when hardware cannot advance.
 
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A dual or triple fan shroud along the lines of the ACX, DCII, TwinFrozr, or Windforce can't be that hard to engineer surely. I don't think I've ever seen a squirrel cage that outperforms AIB designs.
There's really no in-between to reference and non reference. Adding more fans as you suggested would be equivalent to AMD themselves making it non reference.
AMD's last release I believe managed the trick (well, as far as single card operation was concerned at least), and I'm pretty sure the card is considered reference.


Reference does not mandate a blower fan, it's just that reference has become synonymous with that design partly because it represents a good trade off between function and manufacturing cost. Just to forestall the "But the 7990 is a dual GPU card" argument, so are the preceding HD 6990 and HD 5970.
 
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