With the R9 290X released alongside the R9 280X, R9 270X and R7 260X, October 2013 has been a banner month of AMD’s graphics division. Not only was NVIDIA caught flat-footed with cards that were suddenly deemed overpriced (in some cases by a significant amount) but with an impressive lineup of games being released this holiday season, the new Radeon lineup couldn’t be better positioned. Now, we’re about to see yet another launch from AMD in the form of their R9 290 4GB and this one may be the most important of them all.

The R9 290 4GB is very much the lynchpin in AMD’s lineup since it targets gamers who can’t afford or don’t want to spend the $549 demanded by the R9 290X. It also acts as a bridge product between AMD’s Titan killer and the rebranded R9 280X which is slightly more efficient and boasts better overclocking headroom than its bigger brother. NVIDIA’s lineup is also ripe for the picking since, even with their latest price reductions, the GTX 770 and GTX 780 may still not live up to the price / performance ratio offered by the R9 290.