Radeon Steam Deck 8CU vs R9 290

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Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking262not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation8.02no data
Power efficiency5.24no data
ArchitectureGCN 2.0 (2013−2017)RDNA 2 (2022−2023)
GPU code nameHawaiiRDNA 2 Sephiroth
Market segmentDesktopLaptop
Release date5 November 2013 (11 years ago)9 November 2023 (1 year ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$399 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores2560512
Core clock speed947 MHzno data
Boost clock speedno data1900 MHz
Number of transistors6,200 millionno data
Manufacturing process technology28 nm6 nm
Power consumption (TDP)275 Wattno data
Texture fill rate151.5no data
Floating-point processing power4.849 TFLOPSno data
ROPs64no data
TMUs160no data

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16no data
Length275 mmno data
Width2-slotno data
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pinno data

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5no data
Maximum RAM amount4 GBno data
Memory bus width512 Bitno data
Memory clock speed1250 MHzno data
Memory bandwidth320.0 GB/sno data
Shared memory-+

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPortno data
HDMI+-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (12_0)12_1
Shader Model6.3no data
OpenGL4.6no data
OpenCL2.0no data
Vulkan1.2.131-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 5 November 2013 9 November 2023
Chip lithography 28 nm 6 nm

Steam Deck 8CU has an age advantage of 10 years, and a 366.7% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon R9 290 and Radeon Steam Deck 8CU. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Radeon R9 290 is a desktop card while Radeon Steam Deck 8CU is a notebook one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon R9 290
Radeon R9 290
AMD Radeon Steam Deck 8CU
Radeon Steam Deck 8CU

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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4.2 558 votes

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Questions & comments

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