The AMD R9 290 follows in the footsteps of the flagship R9 290X by being equipped with the same Hawaii XT core. While the R9 290 features 256 less shaders than its bigger brother and a slightly trimmed clockspeed ASUS are looking to close the gap on the R9 290X by giving the clockspeed of this particular 290 a bump to 1GHz from 947MHz meaning that this card is running at the same speed as the 290X but with a few less shaders. The card does however come with a very healthy 4GB of GDDR5, the same as the R9 290X. In fact, one could say this is the very same card with just a few shaders disabled and you would be right. Some R9 290's are un-lockable to a full fat R9 290X with a simple BIOS flash which just goes to show how little there is to choose between the two. Sadly, not all R9 290's are un-lockable though so you will just have to play the retail lottery on that one I'm afraid.