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AMD unleashes a beast in the R9

by: John -
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Are you ready for a blazingly fast card at a expensive, yet good price when compared to the competition? Meet the R9 series of cards with the flagship being the AMD R9 290X.

The new set of cards are made for performance and at a good price.  Before today the performance leader was the NVIDIA GeForce Titan. That card runs about $1000. 

Reading various reviews,  the R9 290X looks like it performs better than the Titan in some tests with a price tag of $549. That's almost half of what the Titan is and you would get a faster card. 

The 290X has 2816 stream processors, 176 texture units,  64 ROPs,  and 4GB of vram. Base clock is 1000MHz with memory at 5GHz.

It launches today and reviews have been glowing. This looks to be a nice release for AMD and should put some pressure on NVIDIA to counter. 

290X Graphics Card Pioneers a New Era in Gaming Experience 

AMD makes graphics leadership power move with AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU, the king of the Radeon R9 Series graphics cards, new GPUs for a new era in gaming

SUNNYVALE, Calif. —10/24/2013 

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today launched the AMD Radeon™ R9 290X graphics card, introducing the ultimate GPU for a new era in PC gaming. As the top AMD Radeon™ R9 Series graphics card, the AMD Radeon™ R9 290X GPU delivers breathtaking performance while pushing the boundaries of audio and visual realism for gamers who demand the best.

“As the pinnacle of our new AMD Radeon R9 Series graphics cards, the AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU embodies AMD’s leadership as the ultimate graphics solution for an exceptional gaming experience, affirming that Radeon™ is gaming,” said Matt Skynner, general manager and corporate vice president, AMD Graphics Business Unit. “The formidable combination of Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, Mantle and AMD TrueAudio technology raises the bar for breathtaking audio and graphics, and powerful performance, giving enthusiasts an unprecedented gaming experience.”

With AMD’s award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture at its core, the AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics cards have an unrivaled advantage with Mantle, an industry-changing technology developed by AMD1. With Mantle, top game developers can harness the GCN-powered architecture found in both PCs and consoles, empowering them to speak the native language of the GPU core and benefit from an incomparable level of hardware optimization that unlocks revolutionary performance and image quality.

Equipped with the new AMD TrueAudio technology and made for ultra resolution gaming, the AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU creates today’s most immersive PC gaming experience2.

AMD TrueAudio technology brings a heightened level of revolutionary audio immersion, surrounding gamers with realistic audio environments through stereo headsets and speakers. Armed with a dedicated audio processor in the GPU, the AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics card will deliver a richer and deeply immersive soundscape, including true to life echoes, convolution reverbs and incredibly realistic sounding environments.

Made to perform for UltraHD (4K)3 and AMD Eyefinity technology4, the AMD Radeon™ R9 290X GPU elevates visual experiences on current and upcoming PC titles with superior image quality and expansive, eye-opening displays.

Outstanding features of the AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics cards include:

2,816 stream processing units 
Up to 1 GHz engine clock
4GB GDDR5 memory
Up to 5.0Gbps memory clock speed 
320GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum)
5.6 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power  
API support for DirectX® 11.2, OpenGL 4.3 and Mantle

The AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics cards are available on Oct. 24, 2013 at a starting price of $549 USD and €399 (excluding VAT)5.