Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
AMD Radeon R9 290: specs and benchmarks
Summary
AMD started Radeon R9 290 sales 5 November 2013 at a recommended price of $399 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a GCN 2.0 architecture and made with 28 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 4 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5 GHz are supplied, and together with 512 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 320.0 GB/s.
Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 275 mm. One 6-pin and one 8-pin connectors are required, and power consumption is at 275 Watt.
It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 20.78% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
General info
Some basic facts about Radeon R9 290: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in performance ranking | 223 | |
| Value for money | 12.45 | |
| Architecture | GCN 2.0 (2013−2017) | |
| GPU code name | Hawaii | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Release date | 5 November 2013 (9 years old) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $399 | |
| Current price | $20 (0.1x MSRP) | of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB) |
Value for money
Technical specs
Radeon R9 290's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon R9 290's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 2560 | of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
| Core clock speed | 947 MHz | of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT) |
| Number of transistors | 6,200 million | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 275 Watt | of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 151.5 | of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB) |
| Floating-point performance | 4,849 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Size and compatibility
This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon R9 290 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | |
| Length | 275 mm | |
| Width | 2-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin |
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon R9 290: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 4 GB | of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 512 Bit | of 19000 (GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB) |
| Memory clock speed | 5000 MHz | of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080) |
| Memory bandwidth | 320.0 GB/s | of 3276 (Aldebaran) |
Video outputs and ports
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon R9 290. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort | |
| HDMI | + |
API support
APIs supported by Radeon R9 290, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | 12 (12_0) | |
| Shader Model | 6.3 | |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | |
| OpenCL | 2.0 | |
| Vulkan | 1.2.131 |
Benchmark performance
Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon R9 290. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
This is probably the most ubiquitous benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
Benchmark coverage: 25%
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature seemingly made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
Benchmark coverage: 14%
Unigine Heaven 4.0
This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively small differences. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. The benchmark is still sometimes used, despite its significant age, as it was released back in 2013.
Benchmark coverage: 1%
Send in your benchmark results
Send your test results of Radeon R9 290.
Mining hashrates
Cryptocurrency mining performance of Radeon R9 290. Usually measured in megahashes per second.
| Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) | 545 Mh/s | |
| Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) | 30 Mh/s | |
| Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) | 285 Sol/s |
Gaming performance
Let's see how good Radeon R9 290 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
Relative perfomance
Radeon R9 290's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA equivalent
According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon R9 290 is GeForce GTX 780, which is slower by 1% and lower by 2 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon R9 290:
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon R9 290 according to our statistics.
3.5%
2.5%
2.3%
2.1%
1.7%
1.7%
1.7%
1.6%
1.5%
1.5%
