AMD reduces the price of the Radeon R9 295X2 by 500 dollars - Polidicks

[img]http://www.sweclockers.com/image/red/2014/04/08/IMG_9183.jpg?f[0][x]=0&f[0][y]=0&f[0][w]=1920&f[0][h]=1116&f[0][_f]=crop&t=paneBanner&k=8c8b2b62[/img] [quote]Every new generation of graphics cards get at least one super-card with dual graphics processors. In AMD's case, it's the Radeon R9 295X2, which is currently the fastest consumer-level card in the world. And now it'll become cheaper, as AMD lowers the target price from 1499 to 999 US dollars, a significant cost reduction, in other words. The watercooled card contains two Hawaii XT chips, with a total number of 5632 stream-processors. Added to this are two 512-bit memory buses, and a total of 4GB usable VRAM. The lavished cooling is explained by the fact that the card consumes around 500 Watts. [thumb]http://www.sweclockers.com/image/red/2014/04/08/IMG_9170.jpg?t=original&k=08088f95[/thumb] [/quote] Sources: [url]http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/19275-amd-skalar-av-en-tredjedel-av-prislappen-for-radeon-r9-295x2[/url] [url]http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/AMDs-Dropping-R9-295X2-Price-999-USD[/url]

So instead of an arm and a leg, it now costs an arm and half a leg! AMD are so considerate, thinking of our limbs.

The card uses around 500 Watts? Holy shit

[QUOTE=double D;45910285]The card uses around 500 Watts? Holy shit[/QUOTE] Roughly 100W more than my entire i7 3770 + HD7970 system consumes during peak-load :v: From what I've read, it's got massive problems with overheating

I own one of these, nice bit of kit. Idk what problems people have had with it overheating because mine has never come close to doing that, no matter what game/software I max out. Only issue i've had is a bit of fan rattling which can be fixed by loosening some screws on the w.cooler fan.

[QUOTE=Sexy Robot;45910410]I own one of these, nice bit of kit. Idk what problems people have had with it overheating because mine has never come close to doing that, no matter what game/software I max out. Only issue i've had is a bit of fan rattling which can be fixed by loosening some screws on the w.cooler fan.[/QUOTE] Many people seem to experience the temperatures of the GPU cores exceeding 90 Celsius, which in turn causes them to lower their frequencies

Weird, I've never seen mine top 55C.

Fun. Instead of being obscenely out of reach, it's only laughably out of reach.

[QUOTE=Rixxz2;45910335]Roughly 100W more than my entire i7 3770 + HD7970 system consumes during peak-load :v: From what I've read, it's got massive problems with overheating[/QUOTE] That's the 290X, which uses the normal blower style cooler. The 295X uses a closed loop liquid cooler and afaik never goes above 60 degrees.

For some reason when I saw the title I was thinking of a 700$ card being dropped down to 200$.

[QUOTE=Sexy Robot;45910457]Weird, I've never seen mine top 55C.[/QUOTE] Then I assume either that AMD's got a problem with some cards being shipped with defective cooling systems, or that people are putting them in cases without sufficient air-flow. Probably a mix between both. Edit: Seems like my research was inadequate

[QUOTE=Rixxz2;45910526]Then I assume either that AMD's got a problem with some cards being shipped with defective cooling systems, or that people are putting them in cases without sufficient air-flow. Probably a mix between both.[/QUOTE] the cooling on the 295x2 is decent. the hawaii cards just run hotter as a rule of thumb, they're designed that way [editline]6th September 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=~Kiwi~v2;45910591]I still can't find a reason to justify buying this card. Unless you love triple 4K monitor set ups. But in other related news this price drop should force every other card to drop price pretty soon, makes no sense just to drop this card when their biggest sellers (270x 280 and 290/x varients) sell more.[/QUOTE] future proofing

[QUOTE=~Kiwi~v2;45910610]Or you're completly insane.[/QUOTE] spending this amount on a graphics card might seem crazy to you but relative to how much disposable income some people have, it might not to others

[QUOTE=~Kiwi~v2;45910591] But in other related news this price drop should force every other card to drop price pretty soon, makes no sense just to drop this card when their biggest sellers (270x 280 and 290/x varients) sell more.[/QUOTE] Should be noted that it's closest competitor performance-wise, the Nvidia GTX Titan Z, costs 3000 dollars. (Even though the Titan is about 30% slower)

[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;45910248]So instead of an arm and a leg, it now costs an arm and half a leg! AMD are so considerate, thinking of our limbs.[/QUOTE] Is a leg really worth twice an arm? I'd rather lose a leg than an arm.

AMD please stop! Nvidia is already way to salty after you grabbed all the consoles :v:

What is even the point of this thing? I'd be great if they just overhauled their catalyst drivers so they actually support proper [I]function calls[/I], and pumped some money and developer support into the OpenCL project rather than just trying to make "the most powerful GPU" that's basically a glorified paperweight compared to CUDA-capable hardware which is currently mopping the floor with AMD in the offline rendering arena. These uber-cards are really above the needs of any serious-minded gamer, only potentially useful for parallel processing applications, but AMD's usefulness in offline rendering is a bit of a travesty. Good for using the tiny handful of programs in the world that actually have a stable and full-featured OpenCL implementation, which is not many compared to programs that just spring for CUDA instead. I'm guessing they dropped their prices because anybody who wants a super-gpu that does something other than playing games, is going to be buying a GTX Titan or GTX 780, because you can actually use those for things other than buttcoin and vidya games. AMD really, really needs to pull their head out of their ass, shift gears and make Radeon cards, Catalyst drivers and OpenCL fully GPGPU-capable on the same level as Nvidia products because there is simply no commercial or hobbyist need for a 1000+ dollar supercard that's too expensive for gamers but too much of a one trick pony for artists and filmakers.

So what is the point in a card like this exactly? Does it run the death star or something

[QUOTE=MasterFen006;45910492]That's the 290X, which uses the normal blower style cooler. The 295X uses a closed loop liquid cooler and afaik never goes above 60 degrees.[/QUOTE] I heard that they fixed the 290X cooling problems, though I may have heard wrong. Also, doesn't the sapphire 290x have 3 fans instead of one and thus fixes this issue as well?

[QUOTE=double D;45910285]The card uses around 500 Watts? Holy shit[/QUOTE] Here's the PowerColor version [IMG]http://s10.postimg.org/jbgjz0h21/Power_Color_R9_295_X2_Devil13_3.jpg[/IMG] :v:

Four PCI-E connectors holy fuck. and I thought two was overkill.

This is only to combat the upcoming new Nvidia series, which are rumored to be more powerful but at a cheaper price.

Jesus, I was already crying for my wallet when I bought the GTX 680 for $599.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;45910742]What is even the point of this thing? I'd be great if they just overhauled their catalyst drivers so they actually support proper [I]function calls[/I], and pumped some money and developer support into the OpenCL project rather than just trying to make "the most powerful GPU" that's basically a glorified paperweight compared to CUDA-capable hardware which is currently mopping the floor with AMD in the offline rendering arena. These uber-cards are really above the needs of any serious-minded gamer, only potentially useful for parallel processing applications, but AMD's usefulness in offline rendering is a bit of a travesty. Good for using the tiny handful of programs in the world that actually have a stable and full-featured OpenCL implementation, which is not many compared to programs that just spring for CUDA instead. I'm guessing they dropped their prices because anybody who wants a super-gpu that does something other than playing games, is going to be buying a GTX Titan or GTX 780, because you can actually use those for things other than buttcoin and vidya games. AMD really, really needs to pull their head out of their ass, shift gears and make Radeon cards, Catalyst drivers and OpenCL fully GPGPU-capable on the same level as Nvidia products because there is simply no commercial or hobbyist need for a 1000+ dollar supercard that's too expensive for gamers but too much of a one trick pony for artists and filmakers.[/QUOTE] This is aimed at 1440p and 4k gamers. It's faster than two 780ti's in sli but 45% cheaper. [editline]6th September 2014[/editline] This price drop makes it the most attractive option for people that want to game at 4k or [URL="http://www.amazon.com/LG-34UM95-Ecran-3440-1440/dp/B00HG7EB64"]21:9 ultra wide monitors[/URL].

I'd rather buy a new $250 graphics card every 3 years for 12 years than this which will be considered mid-range in 5 years. How many graphics card from 12 years or even 5 years ago is as good as, say, a GtX 760?

[QUOTE=~Kiwi~v2;45910591]I still can't find a reason to justify buying this card.[/QUOTE] Mining Dogecoin and Coinye obviously.

I don't know what you guys are talking about, this is a fantastic deal. 295x2 outperforms two Nvidia GTX 780 tis (about $1500), and in almost all games outperforms Titan-Z ($3000) by 10% or more and because of its integrated Asetek liquid cooler, it stays about 20 degrees Celsius cooler under load than dual 780Tis or the Titan-Z.

[QUOTE=aydin690;45911453]This is aimed at 1440p and 4k gamers[/QUOTE] That's exactly the problem though This is a piece of seriously powerful hardware that has it's potential completely locked out because they've done a terrible job of developing their driver technology and have not provided adequate financial support to the OpenCL project. AMD is going to lose a lot of ground in the coming years because they've mostly failed to get into GPGPU market with any serious force, and in the coming years a lot of the people who are going to be buying these Nvidia super GPUs are going to be small film studios, render farms, artists, etc, and AMD is probably going to lose a lot of money because they've only been focusing on gamers as a sole demographic. AMD is literally straddling the verge of bankrupcy and completely missing an opportunity to enter a huge consumer market might just be enough to send them over the event horizon [editline]7th September 2014[/editline] [QUOTE=Snickerdoodle;45911595]Mining Dogecoin and Coinye obviously.[/QUOTE] This, sadly, is pretty much the only use for AMD's gpgpu capabilities Meanwhile, CUDA has like 6+ offline rendering engines devoted exclusively to it's software platform because catalyst and opencl can't support practical kernel sizes for production-ready rendering applications

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;45911731]That's exactly the problem though This is a piece of seriously powerful hardware that has it's potential completely locked out because they've done a terrible job of developing their driver technology and have not provided adequate financial support to the OpenCL project. AMD is going to lose a lot of ground in the coming years because they've mostly failed to get into GPGPU market with any serious force, and in the coming years a lot of the people who are going to be buying these Nvidia super GPUs are going to be small film studios, render farms, artists, etc, and AMD is probably going to lose a lot of money because they've only been focusing on gamers as a sole demographic. AMD is literally straddling the verge of bankrupcy and completely missing an opportunity to enter a huge consumer market might just be enough to send them over the event horizon [editline]7th September 2014[/editline] This, sadly, is pretty much the only use for AMD's gpgpu capabilities Meanwhile, CUDA has like 6+ offline rendering engines devoted exclusively to it's software platform because catalyst and opencl can't support practical kernel sizes for production-ready rendering applications[/QUOTE] No, these are gaming cards man. Nobody is going to buy a 780ti or titan z to replace a workstation card. Also, i find it funny how people think multi-billion dollar companies haven't thought of these things.

[QUOTE=aydin690;45911838]No, these are gaming cards man. Nobody is going to buy a 780ti or titan z to replace a workstation card.[/QUOTE] Raytracing Capabilities =/= OpenGL polycount limits High end gaming cards, with their larger number of ALUs and are ussually as fast or faster for raytracing. Workstation GPUs are predominantly designed to handle enormous polycounts, but they suffer quite badly in their core clock speeds and number of cores, those two generally being the most crucial factors when raytracing with a GPU. GTX Titan series, and for some bizarre reason the GTX 580 currently have the best benchmarks in almost all cuda raytracing applicaitons, and possibly also cuda applications in general. Many small and more financially aware 3d production studios are using Titan stacks now instead of workstation cards because you can get like 3-4 Titans for the same price as a single k6000 With the advent of the fact that Pixar released OpenSubDiv to the public, polycount is going to matter even less as well as subdivision surfaces and tessalation have become drastically more efficient