To get the index we compare the characteristics of video cards and their relative prices.
AMD Radeon R9 290: specs and benchmarks
Price now
260$
Games supported
88%
- Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
- Core clock speed 947 MHz
- Max video memory 4 GB
- Memory type GDDR5
- Memory clock speed 5000 MHz
- Maximum resolution
Year of release
2013
Performance
27.51
Summary
AMD started Radeon R9 290 sales 5 November 2013 at a recommended price of $399. This is GCN 2.0 architecture desktop card based on 28 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at gamers. 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 good gaming and benchmark performance at
27.51%
of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.
General info
Of Radeon R9 290's architecture, market segment and release date.
| Place in performance rating | 179 | |
| Value for money | 21.08 | |
| Architecture | GCN 2.0 (2013−2017) | |
| GPU code name | Hawaii | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Release date | 5 November 2013 (8 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $399 | |
| Price now | $260 (0.7x MSRP) | of 49999 (A100 SXM4) |
Value for money
Technical specs
Radeon R9 290's general performance parameters 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 18432 (AD102) |
| 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 (H100 PCIe) |
| Thermal design power (TDP) | 275 Watt | of 900 (Tesla S2050) |
| Texture fill rate | 151.5 | of 939.8 (H100 SXM5) |
| Floating-point performance | 4,849 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Compatibility, dimensions and requirements
Information on Radeon R9 290's compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop video cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (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 don't have dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 4 GB | of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory bus width | 512 Bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 5000 MHz | of 19500 (GeForce RTX 3090) |
| Memory bandwidth | 320.0 GB/s | of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260) |
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 video cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
| 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
Non-gaming benchmark performance of Radeon R9 290. Note that overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range.
Overall score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. 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.
- 3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
- Unigine Heaven 4.0
- Passmark
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 enough graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
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.
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.
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 |
Game benchmarks
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
Overall Radeon R9 290 performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA equivalent
We believe that the nearest equivalent to Radeon R9 290 from NVIDIA is GeForce GTX 780, which is slower by 1% and lower by 2 positions in our rating.
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.
3.7%
2.5%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
2.3%
2%
1.8%
1.8%
1.6%
