You know how AMD launched the Radeon R9 290X graphics card a couple of weeks ago? Priced at a respectable $549 and able to match anything that can be thrown at it from Nvidia's side, it's a value-driven enthusiast card - if such a statement isn't oxymoronic.

But AMD rarely releases a single high-end GPU at one time. The Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 GPUs launched on the same day in December 2010, while the HD 7970 had the HD 7950 following soon after. Such proximal releases have historically been achieved by using the same base architecture for both headline GPUs.

It's no surprise that R9 290X is now followed by another GPU based entirely on the Hawaii GCN architecture. Radeon R9 290's the name and forcing Nvidia's high-end pricing hand is very much the game. Let's see how this second-rung Hawaii chip stacks up.