AMD seems to be planning another mainstream graphics card. This time it'll be the non X mode R9-280. The R9 series is based upon the 28 nm "Tahiti" GPU (Radeon HD 7950). The chip would Â... AMD Radeon R9 280 in the works ?
They should've just kept the 7950 in production and rake in the cash from the sub $300 market. Better late than never I guess. 3gb of vram with just the basic card is a nice bonus, and hopefully it will have the 7950's overclocking potential as well.
If they tweak something like fabrication size or find a way to make it slightly more power efficient then I'm fine with a re-brand here and there. But if its 100% identical but with a different name, that's pretty dumb. What I don't get is the idiotic naming scheme. Ditch X in 290X and 280X and give them different product numbers. If they've only got 4 GPUs for the entire R9 series, why are they just using the last couple digits? If the argument is "so you don't think the product is worse than the GPUs from the R7 seies" then why did they even bother creating an R7 and R9? I hate marketing.
It was a great card when I bought it two years ago. But it's so weird to see the same card being advertised as new and it's the same price. It's worth mentioning that it was clever to stop production for a while. Right around the time that the r9 290's were getting on the market, I was leaning towards buying a second 7950 to crossfire. The prices skyrocketed up to $450 or so, so I went with a 290. AMD's partners must have appreciated making such a profit on old stock.
I wanted a 7950, they were a bargin at the 160-200USD they were selling at before the mining boom. Now I'm not paying what they go for and holding onto my 6950.
I hear ya; I was looking for a second HD 7970, but I realized I could sell my old one and buy a R9 290 for less money, so it was a no brainer for me. I sold my HD 7970 for more then I bought it brand new.... thank you Bitminers! :nerd:
mine mine mine... ---------------------- at least AMD introduced cards at lower price, instead of higher price like NVidia does. In Japan cards prices didn't got influenced by bitmining rush. However it's still sad to see 2 years old card competing on current market. Makes me wish I bought that card back then.