AMD lifts NDA of Radeon R9 280X/270X and R7 cards

For the arrival of AMD's new flagship you'll still have to wait a week or so but today marks the unveiling of the Radeon R9 280X, R9 270X, R7 260X and R7 270X. Lots of reviews popped up online as the NDA expired so lets take a look at what the big sites are writing.

The Tech Report writes the R9 280X and R9 270X are competent cards that match up very well against NVIDIA's offerings thanks in large due to their aggressive pricing. Overall though, these cards are little more than last generation at lower pricing.

The new Radeon R9 cards match up very well against the competition from Nvidia, too, mostly because they're priced quite aggressively—especially the 280X. Nvidia needs to lop 50 bucks off the price of the GTX 760 and 100 bucks off the GTX 770 in order to remain competitive. Even then, the R9 280X looks to be slightly faster than the GeForce GTX 770. And I'm taken with the cooler Asus put on its rendition of the 280X; it's massive but excellent, as long as it'll fit into your PC's case.

AnandTech sums up the new lineup as a consolidation of products and a formalization of prices.

Along those lines, the fact of the matter is that even with a new name and formally lower prices this is going to be a tough market for AMD. NVIDIA isn’t taking this lightly and while they haven’t seen the need to cut prices on parts like the GTX 770 and GTX 760 – due in part to the fact that AMD’s products are occupying the significant price gaps between them – in the hyper-competitive sub-$200 market NVIDIA has already lowered prices. The players haven’t changed and the game hasn’t changed, only the location has.