14 DAY TRIAL // It's been two months since AMD's release of the Radeon R9 290X graphics card, and not much less since the R9 290 came out, but whatever hopes we had of seeing custom-designed boards have been dashed.
Well, not dashed completely but enough that we're no longer holding out a hope that they will make it out this year.
Some might still come out for Christmas, but even if they do, they will be few, both in variety and in available supply.
This is because Advanced Micro Devices couldn't rake up enough Radeon R9 290 series graphics processing units in late November.
That was when it should have provided its various OEM partners with the Hawaii XT and/or Hawaii Pro but couldn't.
The only proprietary PCB (printed circuit board) we've seen so far is the one for MSI Radeon R9 290X Lightning, and even that one was conspicuously bereft of integrated chip, GPU included. So we can't rely on even this for reassurance.
On that note, according to ComputerBase.de, unique Radeon R9 290 might get launched first, since there's actually a need there.
Reviewers didn't much like the reference cooler of the Radeon R9 290, unlike the Hawaii Pro GPU, because it's noisy and rather lackluster in actual heat dissipation performance.
Heavy gaming loads could even cause it to throttle back performance according to some, though one has to wonder how such load could be achieved. After all, the R9 290 is only slightly less of a monster than the R9 290X. It probably has to do with multi-monitor, super-high-end graphics settings and mods.
Anyway, the custom boards will either come out right at Christmas or in January 2014, possible during CES 2014 (Consumer Electronics Show). Prices should be just a bit above the standard $399.99 / €399.99 (R9 290) and $549.99 / €549.99.