AMD Announces the Never Settle Reloaded Game Bundle

Last fall, AMD brought people the Never Settle bundle, which gave people three free games and a discount on a fourth. That was such a big hit, AMD decided to try it again with newer games and release their Never Settle Reloaded game bundle.

This time around, they’ve reduced the number and updated the bundle to the newest games. The first is the Tomb Raider (2013) reboot, which they say is very heavy on DirectX 11 graphics and even has a “Top Secret” DirectX 11 effect never seen before. They didn’t share anything about what that may be, but they make it sound exciting.

Tomb Raider is a good title, but it comes with the 7800-series cards. Those who really want to push DirectX 11 games, especially at higher resolutions, will be looking to the 7900-series.

The second game featured, which comes with both GPU series, is Bioshock Infinite, which is the first DirectX 11 game in the Bioshock franchise.

I did mention three games, right? AMD saved the best for last. They were very proud to announce (and rightly so) that AMD is the exclusive partner for this next title, meaning that you won’t see this bundled with any cards from the green team. It’s currently in beta now…

Have you guessed what it is yet?

Yep, Crysis 3.

AMD did make a point of saying that Crysis 3’s beta performance right now is not the final performance you can expect with the game. They are working closely with Crytek to optimize everything about the game to give the best possible performance. Indeed, forum member Frakk tested the latest Catalyst beta (12.3 beta 4) and saw a “massive performance increase” in Crysis 3 performance over the previous beta.

Now, the way these are being doled out is similar to the previous Never Settle bundle. Some games come with 7800-series cards and others come with 7900 series cards. You’ve got to go top of the line to get Crysis 3, but if you go with a 7800-series card, you get the not to shabby consolation prize of Tomb Raider.

You knew this was coming, you just didn’t know when…

But wait, there’s more!

If you get any two 7900-series GPUs, you get six games for free. This includes not just two discrete cards, but any two GPUs, meaning if you’re interested in the ASUS ARES II we just reviewed, you’ll get the six-game bundle as well. Same goes for the other two 7990s on the market.

On the conference call with AMD, we also went over a couple commonly asked questions about distribution and delivery. Answers to all of these questions and more can be found at the Never Settle Reloaded landing page: http://www.amd.com/neversettlereloaded. That page is password protected now, but should go live on Monday, February 4th. We’re just telling you about it now because some sites jumped the gun on the embargo and AMD emailed to tell us the embargo was lifted immediately. Our mini-FAQ:

• What stores are participating in the deal? Many prominent E-tailers. Without the list up, we don’t have many examples, but most of our readers buy a lot of their hardware from Newegg, and Newegg is a participant. 
• How will they handle getting these to you? When you buy cards that are eligible for the bundle, the e-tailers will automatically apply the Never Settle Reloaded bundle to your purchase. When it is being packaged, they will drop coupons into the box for the games you’re eligible to receive.
• What do you do with the coupon? You take the coupon code and go to the web site above to redeem your game key(s). Once you redeem it/them, the web site will give you a key for that game and tell you which platform you’ll need to use to download it. Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite will be downloaded through Steam and Crysis 3 will be through Origin. You don’t need to memorize that though; when you redeem your coupon code, the site will tell you where to enter your key for the game.

If you have any more questions, see the web site when it goes live. There are various terms and conditions of course, so reference the site for those.

There you have it folks, AMD’s Never Settle Reloaded game bundle program. The Never Settle bundle was so successful AMD said they didn’t just see an uptick in sales – they saw sales that were an “order of magnitude” higher than pre-bundle sales. Obviously they enjoyed that and want to give it another go. With Crysis 3 coming out and people surely needing to improve their graphics systems to handle it (remember “…but can it play Crysis?”), they stand a good chance of repeating that success.

– Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)