Our missing part of the puzzle so far was the AMD R9 290 video card, which is based on the same Hawaii GPU as the R9 290X but with some functional units cut and lower clock speeds in order to cover another price segment. The card is based on the revised GCN 1.1, the GPU has a total transistor count of 6.2B and also supports TrueAudio, as the 260X and the 290X.Compared to the 290X, we have 40CUs instead of 44, disabling 1 CU per each SE. We have the same number of ROPs though, same memory bus width and speed and also same VRAM quantity. On the stock models, we will find a boost clock of 947MHz, down from the 1GHz clock of the R9 290X; HIS has decided to include a mild overclock from the factory, so we will find the stock clock sitting at 967MHz.

The HIS 290 video card is shipped inside a pretty large cardboard box with a familiar design, which shows logos of the supported technologies and here we will be also able to take a look at the new cooler design:

On one of the sides we have another set of logos:

The box contents list is featured on the opposite side, along with the System Requirements:

If we want to learn more details regarding the main product, we will have to check out the back side:

After the top packaging layer is removed, we will end up with a black box, which features a HIS logo in the middle:

Besides the card, which sits safely inside a foam mold, we will also receive one envelope and a small leaflet which advises on the card installation procedure:

The goodies envelope features on software installation disk, the Quick Installation Guide but also a small case sticker:

The card is quite massive and features two 89mm dual-axial fans which cool the large heatsink; through the heatsink we can see no less than 5 heatpipes of different dimensions: