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AMD’s gaming scientist Richard Huddy has disagreed with the view that ‘Nvidia will own Christmas’, after the 970 and 980 graphics cards were hit by stock shortages, in this exclusive opinion piece sent to PCR.
AMD continues to offer strong performance and great pricing on Radeon R9 series graphics cards right now thanks to channel promotions.
So what that means is you can purchase an AMD Radeon R9 290X starting at $369 – considerably better value than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, which is its equivalent. AMD provides excellent value for performance that is on par in most scenarios, especially at higher resolutions such as 4k, which matters greatly to gamers today.
And looking at our AMD Radeon R9 290, you should start seeing prices starting at $299. If you look historically, I don’t think we’ve ever seen that much performance for under $300. It’s insane. It’s very, very competitive.
The best news is that we have very healthy stock levels for both the 290 and 290X in the channel and the time to buy is now, with channel promotions bringing such great deals.
We’ve got phenomenal products in the market and there’s plenty of it around.
I guess the other thing to think about is performance per dollar; you’re getting a lot of performance for your money with AMD, especially if you consider that the GTX980 is available for ~$550 without taxes vs the R9-290X at $369, we’re very competitive.
Talking of performance for a moment, if you look at some of the latest games coming out for example, Sniper Elite 3 it’s one of the latest titles that’s enabled with Mantle as an API.
For example, the 290X is about anywhere between ten or 12 per cent faster than the 980 when running on Mantle. So if you compare that, you’re getting more performance in the latest games for less money.
If you look at other competitive offerings, there are no free games, but with our 290X you can choose three of the latest games from the back catalogue. There are around 30 titles right now that you can choose from – and these include some of the latest triple-A games.
There is Alien Isolation, for example, which came out this week and that’s already in the bundle. So you can choose from a selection of games that have been out over the last few months, offering great value and strong gamer appeal.
If I was a customer, if I was buying a system, I know what I’d want. With AMD you can buy a system, get up to three games as well, and actually play these latest games on Christmas Day.
Looking at it right now, with these channel promotions, the fact that Mantle enables a lot more performance in some of the latest titles, and the value-add the Never Settle Forever bundle is offering, when you talk about performance per dollar, or value for money, AMD’s offering is extremely compelling.
About the author
Richard Huddy is gaming scientist at AMD. Check out Richard Huddy’s recent interview with PCR here.
