Nvidia’s been killing it on the bundles front this year, tossing in free copies of top-shelf, not-even-released-yet games Batman: Arkham Knight and The Witcher 3 with its 900-series graphics cards. Hot damn. And where’s AMD been through it all? Taking punches quietly in the corner, with no bundles to sweeten the pot on its going-on-two-years-old R200 series since the Never Settle deals died off in January.
It’s been sort of ugly.
But Newegg might’ve leaked AMD’s rebuttal today, as first reported by PC Perspective. Newegg’s bundling free copies of Grand Theft Auto V and DiRT Rally with AMD Radeon graphics cards. To be exact: DiRT Rally is bundled with all R200-series cards, while Grand Theft Auto V is only included with (most) R9 290 and 290X models.
UPDATE: AMD tells us the DiRT Rally bundle is a new AMD-sponsored bundle, but Newegg and the graphics cards manufacturers are offering GTA V on their own. Somebody really wants to move existing stock before the new R300-series cards arrive!
Newegg That’s one solid bundle. Both are new games—especially DiRT Rally, which isn’t even out of Early Access yet. And they’re both good games, too!
It’s just not quite on the same level for me as free copies of The Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight. That’s a hell of a steal for Nvidia, and AMD’s it’s-still-pretty-great bundle comes off looking a bit, well, not underwhelming but lesswhelming by comparison, even with GTA V.
Free games w/ ANY @AMDRadeon R9 #GPU purchase! Incl. #GTA5 on select cards! http://t.co/niwSx6KVmi pic.twitter.com/w7dniWlxZv
— Newegg Hot Deals (@NeweggHotDeals) May 13, 2015//
Even so, it’s still free, good games. $95 worth of free, good games. That’s nothing to sneeze at, especially when paired with the bargain price of the R9 290X. Though if you’re willing to hold off a few months, AMD did just tease its new 300-series cards—and they’re looking mighty impressive at the moment, packing cutting-edge new HBM memory technology. These bundles for the 290 and 290X are probably a carrot to help clear out existing stock before the new cards arrive, in fact.
This article was originally published on 5/13/15 but updated on 5/14/15 to include AMD’s comments.