[Rant] There goes my R9 290X dream down the toilet

AMD released their flagship graphics card, namely the R9 290X couple of weeks ago. The card was priced at $550, which when compared with the competition, was cheaply priced. But $550 is not cheap indeed. I wanted wait and see how the R9 290 would perform like because it would be considerably cheaper than the big brother while only being slightly slower. That has been the case with both NVidia and AMD families. 

R9 290 is coming out in a week. The expected price is $449.

But I was keen to know how the 290X would be priced in Japan as that's what matters to me. (I'm currently living in Japan by the way). Amazingly, even after two week, the card is still not up for sale in Japan. It seems the cards are out of stock everywhere in the world. AMD seems to have only made a handful of cards. That sucks really, especially as NVidia cut prices to remain competitive. AMD could have made a lot of money in the first week if there were enough 290X cards.   NVidia's price cuts came only after a few days.

Anyways, I search the internet and came across one post that suggested the 290X would cost about ¥71,000. That's $160 (or ¥16,000) more expensive than the US price. With the cards like the Palit GTX 780 Super Jetstream available for like ¥65,000 (still overpriced though), 290X won't do well with that price - especially being a reference card. Super Jetstream is a heavily binned card and comes with a massive cooler and a big factory overclock. Even with the factory overclock, it might overclock better than the 290X. So basically, the GTX 780 is the better choice, unless you have a 4K display. I'm sure most people haven't even heard of 4K displays yet, but you never know about these Japanese. They are crazy.

If the card is not cheaper than ¥60,000, there is no point even looking to buy this card. I would be better off getting a second GTX670. But I really hate to get multiple graphics cards because of the potential issues with it. However, if I can get a G-Sync enabled monitor at the same time, I would probably not see the micro-stuttering. Basically, my R9 290X dream is dead. Even if the 290 comes out at $449 in the USA, that would cost well above ¥55,000 here. That too, is not affordable. 

[Rant] NVidia outs their answer to the R9-290X: The GTX780 Ti

That was unexpected really. We were all waiting to see the price of the GTX780 to drop to $550-ish, then the price of the Titan to $799 and finally add a new card to the end of the spectrum at the magic $999. No, that's not what is going to happen - at least immediately. It's going to be GTX780 Ti. 

Well, the Titan Ultra or whatever will inevitably come out because that is not something NVidia has to design from the scratch. It is already designed. That's the full blown GK110 chip - the big Kepler. However, that silicon is not yet being used even in their workstation graphics cards. The K20x, which is the fastest Tesla card only supports 2688 shaders. That's the same count as found in the Titan.

This is the first time NVidia has used the Ti moniker in their flagship card. (Titan is of course the flashship card, but that is more of a dream chip) The GTX *80 is usually the flagship card of the generation. The Ti moniker is reserved for mid-range/mainstream graphics cards like the GTX *50 or GTX *60. The thing is, just like we have no clue what the R9-290X's specs or pricing will be, it's the same story with the GTX780 Ti. But there were a few of official results the reviewers were allowed to post, and according to them, the 290X could easily own a GTX780. But we only have the performance figures for 4K gaming. It could be because AMD cards seem to incur a less of a performance hit that NVidia as the resolution goes up. The 1080p results might be almost same. 

Image courtesy LegitReviews.

In my opinion, the GTX 780 should still come down in price. Heck, there is no reason for it to be $250 more expensive than the GTX 770. NVidia should drop the price of the GTX780 to $550 and perhaps introduce the GTX780 Ti at the $650 price point. 

But the issue is, GTX780 is so close to the performance of the Titan. The only differentiating point is the amount of RAM present. Yes, it has better compute performance compared to the GK104, but that is not much of a concern for the gamer. GTX780 Ti will obviously be faster than the GTX780, but how much? That would be faster than the Titan in gaming benchmarks, except in 4K game-play perhaps. That's a really niche market. It's actually a niche in a niche market. Remember, the only 4K monitor that is currently available is the Asus 32" monitor which costs $3000+. So, the GTX780 Ti would cripple the position of the Titan in the line up. NVidia won't be able to charge $999 for a card that performs slower in most scenarios (or for most people, in all scenarios.) It would be very interesting to see what NVidia would price them at. 

On another note, AMD has actually delayed the launch of the R9 290X. I believe this is to see what NVidia was up to. It's time for PRICE WARS! OH YEAH! Good times for the consumer.