The Power of the Darkside?

Would rate at 3 GB , at least until nVidia has gotten a full 4gb. 3.5 gb would be kind of confusing and strange for the lamen. Plus it would come with questions that maybe a few months down the road wont even be an issue. This is all just an opinion from a grunt, really who am I to tell nVidia how market their stuff. I just think you can't call it a 4 GB card if it can't pony up. Right now there is not much out there that is going to tax the 970, with the exception of 4k. A 980 would be a more appropriate choice for that anyways. This is my first Radeon card so I am still skeptical as to whether I am going to like this 290. Its got to be better than the GTS 450 I'm using now.

[(TKC)-o]T3[o]

Owned one Radeon card... will never own another one. But that was years ago.

[λndersony â€]

Have to give AMD kudos for introducing Mantle like 223 mentioned, that alone made me want to try one out myself -- like the 295x2. After trying some 'dark side' myself, I'm impressed. I've never been one to pay bleeding edge price for bleeding edge tech. I'll spend some high amounts on good deals though...

Micro$oft was not giving us all the performance out of our cards through DirectX11 ... along comes AMD's Mantle with increased performance, so now DirectX12 can perform leaps and bounds over DirectX11 like Mantle. I'll tip my hat to the original leader in that race -- Microsoft may win the race in the end towing Nvidia along with them, but the fact that AMD had to show them how to swing makes them the winner (and us) really... competition is good thing.

AnandTech's Early Test of DX12

...read into this as EARLY results, nonetheless, it's evident we are in for some good increases with existing hardware because of AMD.

The R9 290 is in. This thing is a beast , I'm getting 170fps on bf4 ultra maxed out settings. Even with scaling turned up to 125 percent on ultra everything, I was still getting playable frame rates. Try this with your system and it will really tax your rig. AMD mantle is fantastic, I have not had any stability issues. I have yet to over clock the 290 but here is my 3DMark scores. Sky diver was 19500 and Firestrike was 6900. I did not even bother with running "the cloud" test as my system would have just crushed it anyway. Please excuse me for sitting on my soapbox but this thread was started in that AMD is competing with nVidia and doing well enough to warrant considering switching from nVidia to AMD. I think this 290 hits the sweet spot for price vs performance. My R9 290 was $270 with a $30 rebate making this card $240 and comes with a lifetime warranty. I can't wait to see what Andersony is going to get out of his 295x2.