The high-stakes desktop GPU wars are spawning bona fide price carnage, as AMD just attacked again in its never-ending duel with Nvidia. State-of-the-art graphics cards based on Radeon R9 295 GPUs can be purchased this holiday season for well under $800 after yet another massive cost reduction.
Both Newegg and Amazon seem to have ratified the discounts, and the cheapest all-around R9 295×2 solution is available via the former retailer at $769.99. That’s a dual-GPU configuration put together by HIS with 8GB GDDR5 memory and four Mini DisplayPort connectors.
The deal also includes a free copy of Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest turn-based strategy gaming title from Firaxis. An identical graphics card assembled by XFX is $769.99 after a $30 rebate, and similar high-end gaming cards from VisionTek, Sapphire and Diamond can be had for between $780 and $800.
Amazon only has the XFX and Sapphire products up for grabs, at $800 each. Back when they first went up for sale, all these cards cost $1,500. Almost twice the price!
Nvidia’s GTX 980 graphics goes for as little as $550 with 4GB GDDR5 RAM, which means two would cost $1,100. That’s $300 more than the Radeon R295X2. However, the GTX 980s run cooler and quieter because they’re built on a more efficient architecture. They also come with your pick of Assassin’s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4 and The Crew to equal out AMD’s Beyond Earth promo.
