While sitting on the couch watching some college basketball I decided to start browsing Amazon.com and Newegg.com for some Radeon R9 graphics cards.  With all of the stock and availability issues AMD has had recently, this is a more frequent occurrence for me than I would like to admit.  Somewhat surprisingly, things appear to be improving for AMD at the high end of the product stack.  Take a look at what I found.

  Amazon.com Newegg.com
ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II $599 -
Visiontek R9 290X $599 -
XFX R9 290X Double D $619 -
ASUS R9 290 DirectCU II $499 -
XFX R9 290 Double D $499 -
MSI R9 290 Gaming $465 $469
PowerColor TurboDuo AXR9 280X - $329
Visiontek R9 280X $370 $349
XFX R9 280 Double D - $289
Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 - $299
Sapphire R7 265 $184 $149

It's not perfect, but it's better.  I was able to find two R9 290X cards at $599, which is just $50 over the expected selling price of $549.  The XFX Double D R9 290X at $619 is pretty close as well.  The least expensive R9 290 I found was $469 but others remain about $100 over the suggested price.  In reality, having the R9 290 and R9 290X only $100 apart, as opposed to the $150 that AMD would like you to believe, is more realistic based on the proximity of performance between the two SKUs.  

Stepping a bit lower, the R9 280X (which is essentially the same as the HD 7970 GHz Edition) can be found for $329 and $349 on Newegg.  Those prices are just $30-50 more than the suggested pricing!  The brand new R9 280, similar in specs to the HD 7950, is starting to show up for $289 and $299; $10 over what AMD told us to expect.

Finally, though not really a high end card, I did see that the R7 265 was showing up at both Amazon.com and Newegg.com for the second time since its announcement in February. For budget 1080p gamers, if you can find it, this could be the best card you can pick up.

What deals are you finding online?  If you guys have one worth adding here, let me know! Is the lack of availability and high prices on AMD GPUs finally behind us??