We have been paying close attention to the Radeon R9 290X launch as we wanted to see how the consumer market would react. The card got positive reviews and it turns out that end users liked the price/performance of the card and that they were rather forgiving, as nobody seems to mind that Über mode can get noisy.
At one of the most popular USA etailers the new Radeon R9 290X stayed in stock for a few hours and currently all the cards are sold out. This might be a combination of high demand and limited inventory, but history teaches us that there are never enough of these high end cards at launch. The consumers usually want a few more than the company has.
This is mostly good news for the image of AMD graphics, but of course sales guys would always like to sell a few more and make some more money.
Most of the cards got priced at $579.99, slightly north of the suggest etail price but they still sold out. The good news for people who didn’t managed to get its card in the first run, the second batch of R9 290X cards should be available next week, possibly coinciding with the R9 290 rollout.
You can see the cards listed here.