AMD Celebrates Release of 8GB Radeon R9 290X With A Free Copy Of Civilization: Beyond Earth To New R9 290, 290X & 295X2 Customers

A rumor we reported on earlier this week has proven true: 8GB Radeon R9 290X cards are coming. As expected, MSI, PowerColor, and Sapphire are all on-board to deliver these models, with more to come. Unfortunately, we’re not sure of what pricing is going to be like, but we do have confirmation that these cards will be clocked higher than the 4GB reference model.

I’m sure it won’t take long for in-depth comparisons between the 4GB and 8GB 290X to trickle out, but AMD’s not wanting to wait for that. It’s just too excited to give the PC gaming world its first 8GB card, and it believes it has the right game to saturate such a large framebuffer: Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth. As the title says, that game’s going to be free to those who purchase any 290 card, be it the 290, 290X or 295X2.

I’ll let AMD speak for itself here, since it hypes the card and game up quite well:

“As a special thank you to its new customers, AMD announces on November 6 that qualifying purchases from participating retailers of an AMD Radeon R9 295X2, R9 290X or R9 290 graphics card will be eligible for a free copy of 2K’s Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth. Collaboration between Firaxis Games and the AMD Gaming Evolved program brings deep PC optimization to Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth.

AMD wants gamers to freely experience the optimization for Civilization: Beyond Earth on high performance AMD Radeon R9 Series GPUs, which are ready to support empire-worthy display technologies like AMD Eyefinity and 4K UltraHD. Support for AMD CrossFire technology and an exceptional implementation of the Mantle graphics API provides discerning gamers with radical performance and effortlessly smooth gameplay.

Civilization: Beyond Earth is the first of many next-generation PC games that crave larger GPU framebuffers, and the AMD Radeon R9 290X 8GB answers the challenge. In performance testing, the AMD Radeon R9 290X 8GB graphics card with Mantle rendered Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth at higher frame rates than any other single-GPU graphics card.”

Roy Taylor, AMD’s corporate VP of its ISV/IHV partner group, is really happy that this has become a reality, as he’s a massive fan of the Civilization series. He says, “I personally have enjoyed more than 500 hours of game time with the Sid Meier’s Civilization franchise, and I’m thrilled by what AMD and Firaxis Games have done with the Mantle graphics API to make Beyond Earth a smooth, high-performance marvel.”

Not only will purchasing a 290 card give you a free copy of Beyond Earth, but you’ll simultaneously be given a gold reward coupon for use in the company’s Never Settle: Space Edition. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that those who might have purchased a participating card in recent weeks will be eligible for this free game.