Custom Design Radeon R9 290 to Launch Ahead of Custom Design R9 290X
 

AMD missed its late-November window for giving its partners enough Radeon R9 290 series chips to roll out their custom-design boards in time for Christmas (the winter shopping season). It turns out that custom-design R9 290 and R9 290X cards could launch perilously close to Christmas, or miss it altogether, and launch next year. Custom design R9 290 series cards are highly anticipated as the press didn't receive the reference-design cooling solution of the two cards as well as it did the chips themselves. Reference design coolers, reviews revealed, are not only noisy, but also don't cool the GPUs well enough to prevent throttling under gaming loads.

Barring the recent reveal of MSI's Radeon R9 290X Lightning PCB, we've not come across a single custom-design R9 290 series card. Sources told ComputerBase.de that custom-design R9 290 (non-X) cards could launch first, in the mid/late-December thru January time-frame, and R9 290X could follow "later." One AIB partner which did not want to be named, attributed it to under-supply of the "Hawaii" silicon, and not any design defects that AMD is working to correct. The Radeon R9 290 (reference) is priced at $399.99, and the R9 290X for $549.99.

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