The unfortunately named PC Hardware site, Fudzilla.com is reporting that their sources make the AMD R9 295X2 to be a power hungry 500W GPU. They are also saying that the price of the AMD R9 295X2 will be north of $1000 though cheaper than the GTX TItan Z. However the later is purely educated-speculation on their part, although we have the same guess.
A teaser of the AMD R9 295X2 'Vesuvius' Dual Hawaii-XT GPU
Dual Hawaii-XT GPU 'Vesuvius' is a 500W TDP Card - Will Probably Retail for More than $1000
If this information is true then it might help explain why AMD actually went with a Hybrid Cooler. Since if the rating is actually 500Watts, the heat would have been unmanageable on air. I imagine they might have been able to cool it with a well designed vapor chamber cooler and the fan on full, but then it would have made too much noise. Anyways, the pricing that Fudzilla predicts, about the same we have predicted in our previous articles, means that the high end of even AMD, is quickly growing out of reach of us mere mortals. The prices of AMD cards had been badly bloated by Scrypt mining because the only other feasible choice arrived too late and too little (I am referring of course to Nvidia's Maxwell GTX 750 and GTX 750 Ti). However the fact remains that the Maxwells and AMD's mid to top end is currently facing a problem of Supply and Demand.
This problem will end in a few more months when the first ASIC Scrypt Miners come online, and prices will drop back down, hopefully. However thing is, the miners know they only have a few days left before GPU mining becomes unfeasible so the demand for this card will be at all time high. Of course, the high TDP of the card, if true, might actually discourage miners on a Performance Per Watt schema. Though there are many pro miners that run on free electricity. So I doubt that will deter many of them. Similarly I doubt any enthusiast who's actually aiming for a Dual GPU card like the AMD R9 295X will be deterred by its power hungry requirement.
| Radeon HD 6990 | Radeon HD 7990 | Radeon R9 295 X2 | |
| GPU Codename | Antilles | New Zealand | Vesuvius |
| GPU Process | 40nm | 28nm | 28nm |
| GPU Cores | 3200 SPs | 4096 SPs | 5632 SPs |
| Memory | 2 GB GDDR5 x 2 | 3 GB GDDR5 x 2 | 4 GB GDDR5 x 2 |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit x 2 | 384-bit x 2 | 512-bit x 2 |
| Cooling | Dual Slot Single Fan (Blower Type) | Dual Slot Triple Fan | Dual Slot Hybrid Cooler |
| Power Connectors | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin | 8+8 Pin |
| TDP | 300W | 375W | 500W |
| Price | $699 US | $999 US | ~$1499 US* |
*Details mentioned are not indicative of the final product!
Wow today is a bad day, first the Maxwell News, now this. #AMD R9 295X2 might actually be a 500W card. http://t.co/Zghcqy3wgJ
— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) March 31, 2014
