AMD Launches The Way It's Meant To Be Bundled: Get $320 of Free AAA Games

Radeon. Without any doubt, one of two brands that spark emotion with hundreds of millions of gamers world-wide. The brand started its life 13 years ago, when ATI adopted the Radeon brand for its DirectX 7 hardware, Transform & Lighting Engine et all. Pixel Shaders were little more than register combiners, but the technology was there. Since then, ATI and now AMD have often pleasantly surprised us, with maybe the biggest impact coming from Eyefinity, multi-display gaming technology which changed the world of gaming and brought down simulator-level experience to the regular audience. After all, you can buy three 1080p displays for as low as $400, and enjoy gaming in millions of pixels.


AMD is promising a lot with the Never Settle Reloaded campaign...

Where AMD lacked, was the bundle. AMD was no match for Nvidia's The Way Its Meant To Be Played program, which former AMD management never understood (just like they did not understood Eyefinity). Under the new management, AMD started its Never Settle campaign, and under the provocative "The Way It's Meant To Be Bundled" campaign (officially named Never Settle: Reloaded), AMD is taking unprecedented steps to become the choice when it comes to purchasing a new graphics card.

Never Settle: Reloaded - Up to $318.34 in Free Games!
After some etailers jumped the gun, AMD lifted the NDA early and let the world know that if you buy an Radeon HD 7800, 7900 or 7990 card(s), you can receive from $120 to $310 (Worldwide) to $320 worth of games (if you live in the UK).

What gives this bundle value is not just the physical cost of games - but the names of the games as well. If you purchase a HD 7800 Series card, you get either Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider (EMEA, North America, Australia, New Zealand) or Bioshock Infinite and Devil May Cry (APAC). $120 worth of games for a card that typically goes for $220 is an amazing value - you only pay $100 for the card itself.

If you decide to buy a HD 7950 or 7970, you will get Crysis 3(!) and BioShock Infinite regardless of where you live. For example, we just bought a GigaByte Radeon HD 7970 3GB OC at Fry's for $379.99 and got $120 of top games - this is nothing short of an incredible value.


...and yes, they deliver. $310-320 worth of AAA titles which are bound to go blockbuster is something that should not be missed.

AMD was not done with their Never Settle: Reloaded Bundle - if you buy a Radeon HD 7990, or two 7950 / 7970 for Multi-GPU mode, this is where it really gets interesting. Buy two GPUs (in our case, $759.98), and get Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs. This is practically one 7970 for free. Or two 22" or 23" displays for "free Eyefinity".


If you live in the UK, you can get even better deal with eight games in total. No Lara Croft though, so we'd rather stick with two 7950's or two 7970's and get Tomb Raider too.

With the exception of Crysis 3 and their EA Origin store (Blah), all games are distributed through Steam. The way to get the titles is very simple: purchase the cards, submit the appropriate data on www.amd.com/neversettlereloaded and you will receive keys for all the titles you're entitled to.

Needless to say, Crysis 3, Bioshock, Tomb Raider and Far Cry all used to be Nvidia's titles. In our conversations with AMD executives, we were told that this is just the beginning, and that great hardware they manufacture, and great software coming from partners - is a start. Needless to say, it seems that AMD figured out that they need to offer that extra value, and they decided to go big at it. We never saw this level of commitment coming from a vendor.

If you are a gamer, AMD just saved you enough money to… buy a new monitor? Buy a second and a third monitor for Eyefnity? A speaker set? Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers? Vote with your wallets.