The GeForce GTX Titan blew us all away eight months ago with its mindblowingly fast GPU, cramming 7080 million transistors into a 561mm2 die to provide massive processing power and bandwidth. The catch, of course, was that Nvidia wanted (and still wants) $1,000 for it -- a sum that didn"t necessarily seem to prevent cards from flying off shelves even though it"s more than our entire entry-level rig.
Although AMD"s new series got off to an underwhelming start, we knew better things would eventually follow, and this week"s Radeon R9 290X is the first truly new product of its range. In a sense, the R9 290X (codenamed "Hawaii XT") could be considered AMD"s Titan, as it takes the Tahiti architecture and stuffs with nearly 2000 million more transistors.
It"s the most complex and powerful GPU AMD has created and by no coincidence, it"s also the company"s most expensive single-GPU product to date matching the Radeon HD 7970. Before you click away, that"s "only" $550, which is substantially cheaper than Nvidia"s solution.
Read: AMD Radeon R9 290X Review: Challenging the Titan at half the price
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