I broke down and purchased a non reference Gigabyte R9 290 card for $500. The card is selling for $579 but newegg made me a offer to take it down to $500 because I canceled an order for a reference 290 since the non references were due out. I plan on mining litecoin with it during down time so eventually it will pay for itself. With the price hike of AMD you can save buying nvidia. It's funny because before the hike the AMD's were the price per performance leader. If you do go AMD just mine some litecoin to make the card's cost free. It may take you 3 months but eventually it will pay for the card.