Calculate the TPS of the Radeon R9 390 X2 on local AI models

AMD 8 GB GDDR5 346 GB/s September 2015

Every model in our catalogue assessed against this card at the context length and minimum quality you choose. Speed is an estimate for a single request, calculated from this card's memory bandwidth and the size of each model once compressed.

Calculated for this card

337 models it can run

679 models in our catalogue altogether

Largest model it holds

Baichuan 1-13B

13.3B · Q3_K_M · 23.2 tok/s

Fastest model

Gemma 3 QAT 1B

114 tok/s · 1B

Which AI models can run on a Radeon R9 390 X2?

Set the inputs, read the answer

More context means more memory for the conversation cache. Speed is for a fresh conversation and does not change with this setting.

Hides models that would only fit by being compressed below this point.

337 models match

Calculating
Quantisation Fit
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

Gemma 3 1B 1B Mar 2025 1.8 GB 33k tokens Q8_0 Comfortable
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

Gemma 3 QAT 1B 1B Apr 2025 1.8 GB 33k tokens Q8_0 Comfortable
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

HGRN 1B (WT 103) 1B Nov 2023 1.8 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

LLama 3..2 Typhoon 2 1B 1B Dec 2024 1.8 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

OLMo-1B 1B Feb 2024 1.8 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
114 tok/s

69–183 · low confidence

Pythia-1b 1B Apr 2023 1.8 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
106 tok/s

63–169 · low confidence

OpenELM-1.1B 1.1B May 2024 1.9 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
104 tok/s

62–166 · low confidence

DeciCoder-1B 1.1B Aug 2023 1.9 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
104 tok/s

62–166 · low confidence

SantaCoder 1.1B Jan 2023 1.9 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
104 tok/s

62–166 · low confidence

TinyLlama-1.1B (1T token checkpoint) 1.1B Oct 2023 1.9 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
104 tok/s

62–166 · low confidence

TinyLlama-1.1B (3T token checkpoint) 1.1B Oct 2023 1.9 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
95.1 tok/s

57–152 · low confidence

EXAONE 4.0 (1.2B) 1.2B Jul 2025 2.0 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
95.1 tok/s

57–152 · low confidence

MinerU2.5 1.2B Sep 2025 2.0 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
95.1 tok/s

57–152 · low confidence

Pleias 1.0 1.2B 1.2B Dec 2024 2.0 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
95.1 tok/s

57–152 · low confidence

Pleias-RAG-1B 1.2B Apr 2025 2.0 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
92.8 tok/s

56–149 · low confidence

Llama 3.2 1B 1.2B Sep 2024 2.2 GB 131k tokens Q8_0 Comfortable
91.5 tok/s

55–146 · low confidence

MiniCPM-1.2B 1.2B Jun 2024 2.0 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

DeepSeek Coder 1.3B 1.3B Jan 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

DeepSeek-VL-1.3B 1.3B Mar 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

DigiRL 1.3B Jun 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

GLA Transformer 1.3B 1.3B Aug 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

Janus 1.3B 1.3B Oct 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

Kosmos-2.5 1.3B Aug 2024 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

Otter 1.3B May 2023 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable
87.8 tok/s

53–141 · low confidence

Phi-1 1.3B Oct 2023 2.1 GB 131k tokens ? Q8_0 Comfortable

Speeds are estimates for a single request — one conversation at a time — calculated from memory bandwidth, model size and quantisation. Real throughput varies with the inference runtime and its version. Figures published by hardware vendors measure many simultaneous requests and are much higher.

On record

Radeon R9 390 X2 full specification

Everything on record for this board, ordered by how much it bears on running a language model rather than by how a spec sheet would list it. Memory comes first because it decides the outcome; the rest is context.

Memory

The two specifications that decide what this card can run and how quickly. Capacity sets which models fit; bandwidth sets how many tokens per second they produce once they do.

Memory size
8 GB
Memory bandwidth
346 GB/s
Memory type
GDDR5
Memory bus width
512 bit
Memory clock
1.35 GHz

The chip

Which processor is on the board and how it was manufactured. A smaller process size generally means more performance for the same power.

Graphics processor
Grenada
Architecture
GCN 2.0
Generation
Pirate Islands(R9 300)
Foundry
TSMC
Process size
28 nm
Transistors
6.2 billion
Transistor density
14,200 K/mm²
Die size
438 mm²
Released
3 September 2015

Clock speeds

How fast the processor runs. Worth far less here than on a gaming benchmark: generating text is limited by memory bandwidth, so a higher clock barely moves the result.

Base clock
1 GHz
Boost clock
1 GHz

Processing units

What the chip contains. These drive graphics performance and matter mainly for processing a long prompt rather than for producing the answer.

Shading units
2,560
Texture mapping units
160
Render output units
64
L1 cache
16 KB
L2 cache
1 MB

Theoretical performance

Peak arithmetic rates published for the board. These are ceilings that no real workload reaches, and generating text reaches a small fraction of them because it is limited by memory rather than arithmetic.

Single precision (FP32)
5.1 TFLOPS
Double precision (FP64)
640 GFLOPS
Pixel rate
64 GPixel/s
Texture rate
160 GTexel/s

The board

What it takes to physically install and power the card — the practical constraints that decide whether it fits the machine you already own.

Power draw (TDP)
580 W
Suggested power supply
950 W
Power connectors
4x 8-pin
Bus interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Slot width
Triple-slot
Display outputs
2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, 1x DisplayPort 1.2

Software support

Which graphics and compute interfaces the card supports. CUDA compute capability is the one that bears on inference: below 7.0 there are no tensor cores, and modern inference software falls back to slower code paths.

DirectX
12.0
OpenGL
4.6
Vulkan
1.2
OpenCL
2.1
Shader model
6.5

Listings

Where to buy a Radeon R9 390 X2

No vendor is currently listing this card. Listings come from vendors who publish them here directly — browse the vendor directory to see who is selling what.

What the numbers mean

What the memory subsystem means for AI

Memory

8 GB

Bandwidth

346 GB/s

Largest model

Baichuan 1-13B

At 8 GB of GDDR5 the Radeon R9 390 X2 is limited to the smaller end of the catalogue. About 7.2 GB is actually available to a runtime, and a model has to fit entirely inside it before generating anything at all.

The memory bus moves 346 GB/s across a 512-bit bus. That is the number that governs generation speed — arithmetic per byte read is small enough that the bus, not the cores, is what everything waits on.

That comes from a 1.35 GHz memory clock across the bus width above. Widening the bus and raising the clock are the two levers a manufacturer has, which is why a card with unremarkable cores can still generate quickly.

In practice that combination tops out at Baichuan 1-13B — 13.3B, compressed to Q3_K_M, generating around 23.2 tokens per second.

The chip and how it was built

The Radeon R9 390 X2 is built on the Grenada graphics processor, using AMD's GCN 2.0 architecture, as part of the Pirate Islands(R9 300) generation.

The chip is manufactured by TSMC, on a 28 nm process, with a die measuring 438 mm², holding 6.2 billion transistors. A smaller process generally means more performance for the same power, though for language models it matters far less than the memory subsystem.

It was released in September 2015, roughly 10 years ago. Inference software support tends to follow hardware by a year or two, so a card of this age generally has mature, well-optimised code paths available to it.

Compute throughput, and why it matters less than it looks

FP64

640 GFLOPS

Double-precision throughput is 640 GFLOPS. It has no bearing on running a language model — no inference runtime uses it — but it separates datacentre parts from consumer ones, since the latter deliberately restrict it.

Clocks run from 1 GHz at base to 1 GHz boosted. Worth far less here than on a gaming benchmark: raising the clock speeds up the arithmetic, and the arithmetic is not what generation is waiting on.

Cache and processing units

The Radeon R9 390 X2 has 16 KB of L1 cache, backed by 1 MB of L2. Cache absorbs a share of the memory traffic that would otherwise hit the main bus, which is the one place on this page where a number other than bandwidth quietly affects generation speed — a large L2 lets more of the working set stay close to the cores.

There are 2,560 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units. These drive graphics workloads and contribute to prompt processing, but they sit idle for much of the time a model spends generating a reply.

Power, size and installation

Power draw

580 W

The Radeon R9 390 X2 is rated at 580 W, with a 950 W power supply suggested for the whole system. Running a language model keeps a card busy in bursts rather than continuously — it draws hard while generating and idles between requests — so sustained draw over a working day is usually well below the rated figure.

The board occupies a triple-slot, and needs 4x 8-pin. Worth checking against the case and power supply already in the machine, since the largest cards need considerably more of both than a typical desktop provides.

It connects over PCIe 3.0 x16. The interface governs how quickly a model is loaded from disk into the card, not how fast it runs once there, so a narrower link costs a few seconds at startup and nothing thereafter.

The extremes

The largest AI models that run on a Radeon R9 390 X2

The biggest open-weight models that fit on this card, newest first. Each is shown at the best compression the card can hold.

  1. 01 OLMo 2 Furious 13B 13B · Q3_K_M · Dec 2024 23.7 tok/s
  2. 02 Cambrian-1-13B 13B · Q3_K_M · Jun 2024 23.7 tok/s
  3. 03 Fugaku-LLM 13B · Q3_K_M · May 2024 23.7 tok/s
  4. 04 OpenThaiGPT v1.0.0 (13B) 13.1B · Q3_K_M · Apr 2024 23.5 tok/s
  5. 05 Aya 13B · Q3_K_M · Feb 2024 23.7 tok/s
  6. 06 Elyza 13B · Q3_K_M · Dec 2023 23.7 tok/s
  7. 07 NexusRaven-V2 13B · Q3_K_M · Dec 2023 23.7 tok/s
  8. 08 Baize-v2-13B (白泽) 13B · Q3_K_M · Dec 2023 23.7 tok/s
  9. 09 Stockmark-13B 13.2B · Q3_K_M · Oct 2023 23.3 tok/s
  10. 10 Baichuan 1-13B 13.3B · Q3_K_M · Jul 2023 23.2 tok/s

The fastest AI models on a Radeon R9 390 X2

Where this card produces tokens quickest. Smaller models dominate here, because generating each token means reading the whole model out of memory once.

  1. 01 Gemma 3 QAT 1B 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  2. 02 Gemma 3 1B 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  3. 03 LLama 3..2 Typhoon 2 1B 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  4. 04 OLMo-1B 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  5. 05 HGRN 1B (WT 103) 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  6. 06 Pythia-1b 1B · Q8_0 · 1.8 GB 114 tok/s
  7. 07 OpenELM-1.1B 1.1B · Q8_0 · 1.9 GB 106 tok/s
  8. 08 TinyLlama-1.1B (1T token checkpoint) 1.1B · Q8_0 · 1.9 GB 104 tok/s
  9. 09 TinyLlama-1.1B (3T token checkpoint) 1.1B · Q8_0 · 1.9 GB 104 tok/s
  10. 10 DeciCoder-1B 1.1B · Q8_0 · 1.9 GB 104 tok/s

Step by step

How to work out the tokens per second of a Radeon R9 390 X2

You do not have to calculate anything by hand — the gputps.com calculator on this page has already worked it out for every model this card can hold. Reading off the answer takes six steps.

  1. 01

    Find the model in the table

    All 337 models the Radeon R9 390 X2 handles are already listed. The search box takes a name or a size such as 27b, which matches on parameter count.

  2. 02

    Decide how long your conversations run

    Drag the slider to the conversation length you plan to work at. The cache grows with the conversation, and on 8 GB it is often what pushes a large model over the edge.

  3. 03

    Choose how far you will compress

    By default the table picks the least-compressed copy that fits. Setting a floor removes models that only qualify through heavy compression.

  4. 04

    Take the range as the answer

    Speeds come with error bars for a reason. The best case here is 114 tok/s on Gemma 3 QAT 1B, and which inference software you use moves that by thirty to fifty per cent.

  5. 05

    Read the fit verdict last

    The fit column separates models that just fit from those with room to spare — worth checking against the card's 8 GB before settling on one.

  6. 06

    Check the same model from the other side

    Each model page repeats this calculation for the whole catalogue. Worth a look before deciding: it shows what else runs the same model, and how the Radeon R9 390 X2 compares.

Answers

Radeon R9 390 X2 — common questions

01

How much memory does a Radeon R9 390 X2 have?

A Radeon R9 390 X2 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory. Around a tenth of that is reserved by the inference runtime and the driver, leaving roughly 7.2 GB available for a model and its conversation.

02

What is the memory bandwidth of a Radeon R9 390 X2?

The Radeon R9 390 X2 has 346 GB/s of memory bandwidth, across a 512-bit memory bus. This is the single best predictor of how fast it generates text, because producing each token means reading the entire model out of memory once.

03

What type of memory does a Radeon R9 390 X2 use?

It uses GDDR5 clocked at 1.35 GHz. HBM types are found on datacentre accelerators and carry far more bandwidth than the GDDR used on desktop cards, which is why they generate tokens considerably faster at the same capacity.

04

Who makes the Radeon R9 390 X2?

The Radeon R9 390 X2 is a AMD product, with the chip manufactured by TSMC, on a 28 nm process.

05

When was the Radeon R9 390 X2 released?

The Radeon R9 390 X2 was released in September 2015.

06

How much power does a Radeon R9 390 X2 use?

The Radeon R9 390 X2 has a rated board power of 580 W, and a 950 W system power supply is suggested. Generating text draws hard in bursts and idles between requests, so average consumption over a working session is normally well below the rated figure.

07

How much cache does a Radeon R9 390 X2 have?

The Radeon R9 390 X2 has 16 KB of L1 cache, and 1 MB of L2 cache. Cache absorbs part of the memory traffic that would otherwise reach the main bus, so a larger L2 gives a modest lift to generation speed beyond what bandwidth alone predicts.

08

Does the Radeon R9 390 X2 support CUDA?

No. CUDA is NVIDIA-only, and the Radeon R9 390 X2 is a AMD card. It runs language models through ROCm, Vulkan or Metal depending on the software, which are less mature than the CUDA path — our estimates apply a penalty for that.

09

What bus interface does the Radeon R9 390 X2 use?

It uses PCIe 3.0 x16. This governs how fast a model is loaded onto the card rather than how fast it runs once loaded, so it costs a few seconds at startup and nothing during generation.

10

Is the Radeon R9 390 X2 good for running local AI models?

Its memory limits it to smaller models though its bandwidth means generation will feel slow on larger models. In total it runs 337 of the models we track. Whether that is enough depends entirely on which model you want — the table above answers that directly.

11

Can a Radeon R9 390 X2 run a model that does not fit in its memory?

It can be split, with the overflow held in system memory — but that part drags the whole thing down, and none of the 8 GB figures on this page assume it.

12

Would two Radeon R9 390 X2 cards be twice as fast?

No. A second Radeon R9 390 X2 doubles the memory to 16 GB, which lets you hold models neither could hold alone, but generation does not split that way. These figures describe one card.

13

What AI models can a Radeon R9 390 X2 run?

337 of the 679 open-weight language models we track fit on a Radeon R9 390 X2 and can be run locally on it. The table on this page lists every one, with the memory it needs, the quantisation it runs at and an estimated generation speed.

14

What is the largest AI model a Radeon R9 390 X2 can run?

The largest model in our catalogue that fits on a Radeon R9 390 X2 is Baichuan 1-13B at 13.3B parameters, compressed to Q3_K_M. It generates roughly 23.2 tokens per second and needs about 7.2 GB of the card's memory.

15

How many tokens per second does a Radeon R9 390 X2 produce?

It depends on the model. On a Radeon R9 390 X2 the fastest model we track is Gemma 3 QAT 1B at about 114 tokens per second, while larger models run proportionally slower because each token requires reading the whole model out of memory once. Speeds are estimates for a single conversation at a time.

16

Can a Radeon R9 390 X2 run a 7B model?

Yes. For example a Radeon R9 390 X2 runs MetaMath 7B (LLaMa finetune) at Q4_K_M, using about 6.5 GB of memory and generating around 37.7 tokens per second.

17

Can a Radeon R9 390 X2 run a 13B model?

Yes. For example a Radeon R9 390 X2 runs Gemma 4 12B at Q3_K_M, using about 6.5 GB of memory and generating around 25.8 tokens per second.

The other direction

Looking at it from the other side?

This page starts from the hardware. If you already know which model you want and need to know what it takes to run it, start from the model instead.

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