I dunno about MSRP going up, but LTC and BTC miners have certainly driven the street price of the cards up... I want a 290/X pretty badly, but not at $1-200 markups... You could try to blame the retailers, but people keep buying them at these prices, so why not raise the price?
Wait until after the holidays die down, supply will catch up, prices will fall back down and aftermarket solutions should become available.
There are 290X's being leaked/unveiled/announced fairly regularly now. The Asus DCII version was announced (I'll see if I can find a link, I can't remember where I saw it) the MSI Twin Frozr version has been shown, there's a Lightning version in the works, Powercolor just announced a liquid cooled version that comes pre-installed with an EK water block, etc.
It certainly does make that 780 Ti look a lot more attractive when you're seeing R9-290X's going for anywhere from $7-900 depending on how bad the retailer wants to gouge.
