Posted by Nathan Kirsch | Fri, Jun 12, 2015 - 3:32 PM

AMD appears to be showing off the AMD Radeon R9 390X and likely the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X to AMD fans that are part of ‘RED TEAM PLUS’ (previously called AMD Advocates). Members appear to be socially active AMD fans that get a ton of swag (think free video cards, SSDs, memory kits and more) to ensure they stay vocal about how awesome AMD products are. It looks like AMD has flown in a small group of RED TEAM Plus members, not the media, to be the first people outside of AMD and the board partners that get to see AMD’s next-generation graphics cards down at the Austin, Texas headquarters of AMD.

The group got to spend time with Robert Hallock, Public Relations Manager for AMD Graphics & Gaming and even got to spend time with Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEO. Members are posting up photos from the 2-day event with AMD under the hash tag #RTPGATHERING if you wanted to peek into what they are up to. AMD appears to be bypassing traditional PC hardware sites with this launch and is giving them no advanced briefings or details on their upcoming graphics cards. We are glad to see AMD supporting the end users, but it is unusual to see the traditional hardware sites and media not briefed this close to new product launch. In the past when traditional hardware reviewers aren’t given a product with enough time to properly test it there is usually a reason for doing so.

Then again some users buy the latest and greatest video cards from AMD without asking any questions as evident by the image above also found on Twitter today.

Are hardware reviews still relevant or do you lay down cash to buy video cards and gaming hardware without seeing hard numbers? Legit Reviews might be a bit biased, but we still see value in hardware reviews from the folks that do in-depth testing!