Calculate the TPS of the Radeon R9 390X on local AI models
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
679 models in our catalogue altogether
Largest model it holds
Baichuan 1-13B
13.3B · Q3_K_M · 25.8 tok/s
Fastest model
Gemma 3 QAT 1B
127 tok/s · 1B
Which AI models can run on a Radeon R9 390X?
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 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
Gemma 3 1B | 1B | Mar 2025 | 1.8 GB | 33k tokens | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
Gemma 3 QAT 1B | 1B | Apr 2025 | 1.8 GB | 33k tokens | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
HGRN 1B (WT 103) ≈ | 1B | Nov 2023 | 1.8 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
LLama 3..2 Typhoon 2 1B ≈ | 1B | Dec 2024 | 1.8 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
OLMo-1B ≈ | 1B | Feb 2024 | 1.8 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
127
tok/s
76–203 · low confidence |
Pythia-1b ≈ | 1B | Apr 2023 | 1.8 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
117
tok/s
70–188 · low confidence |
OpenELM-1.1B ≈ | 1.1B | May 2024 | 1.9 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
115
tok/s
69–185 · low confidence |
DeciCoder-1B ≈ | 1.1B | Aug 2023 | 1.9 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
115
tok/s
69–185 · low confidence |
SantaCoder ≈ | 1.1B | Jan 2023 | 1.9 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
115
tok/s
69–185 · low confidence |
TinyLlama-1.1B (1T token checkpoint) ≈ | 1.1B | Oct 2023 | 1.9 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
115
tok/s
69–185 · low confidence |
TinyLlama-1.1B (3T token checkpoint) ≈ | 1.1B | Oct 2023 | 1.9 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
106
tok/s
63–169 · low confidence |
EXAONE 4.0 (1.2B) ≈ | 1.2B | Jul 2025 | 2.0 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
106
tok/s
63–169 · low confidence |
MinerU2.5 ≈ | 1.2B | Sep 2025 | 2.0 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
106
tok/s
63–169 · low confidence |
Pleias 1.0 1.2B ≈ | 1.2B | Dec 2024 | 2.0 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
106
tok/s
63–169 · low confidence |
Pleias-RAG-1B ≈ | 1.2B | Apr 2025 | 2.0 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
103
tok/s
62–165 · low confidence |
Llama 3.2 1B | 1.2B | Sep 2024 | 2.2 GB | 131k tokens | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
102
tok/s
61–163 · low confidence |
MiniCPM-1.2B ≈ | 1.2B | Jun 2024 | 2.0 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
DeepSeek Coder 1.3B ≈ | 1.3B | Jan 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
DeepSeek-VL-1.3B ≈ | 1.3B | Mar 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
DigiRL ≈ | 1.3B | Jun 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
GLA Transformer 1.3B ≈ | 1.3B | Aug 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
Janus 1.3B ≈ | 1.3B | Oct 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
Kosmos-2.5 ≈ | 1.3B | Aug 2024 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · low confidence |
Otter ≈ | 1.3B | May 2023 | 2.1 GB | 131k tokens ? | Q8_0 | Comfortable |
|
97.6
tok/s
59–156 · 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 390X 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
- 384 GB/s
- Memory type
- GDDR5
- Memory bus width
- 512 bit
- Memory clock
- 1.5 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
- 18 June 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
- 1.05 GHz
- Boost clock
- 1.05 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
- 2,816
- Texture mapping units
- 176
- 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)
- 5.9 TFLOPS
- Double precision (FP64)
- 739.2 GFLOPS
- Pixel rate
- 67 GPixel/s
- Texture rate
- 185 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)
- 275 W
- Suggested power supply
- 600 W
- Power connectors
- 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
- Bus interface
- PCIe 3.0 x16
- Slot width
- Dual-slot
- Dimensions
- 275 mm × 36 mm
- 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 390X
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
384 GB/s
Largest model
Baichuan 1-13B
At 8 GB of GDDR5 the Radeon R9 390X 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 384 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.
Bandwidth is clock times bus width, and this card clocks its memory at 1.5 GHz. Both halves matter, and neither is visible in a gaming benchmark.
The practical ceiling is Baichuan 1-13B at 13.3B, held at Q3_K_M and running at roughly 25.8 tokens per second.
The chip and how it was built
The Radeon R9 390X 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 June 2015, roughly 11 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
739.2 GFLOPS
Double-precision throughput is 739.2 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 1.05 GHz at base to 1.05 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 390X 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 2,816 shading units, 176 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
275 W
The Radeon R9 390X is rated at 275 W, with a 600 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 dual-slot, measuring 275 mm long, and needs 1x 6-pin + 1x 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 390X
The biggest open-weight models that fit on this card, newest first. Each is shown at the best compression the card can hold.
The fastest AI models on a Radeon R9 390X
Where this card produces tokens quickest. Smaller models dominate here, because generating each token means reading the whole model out of memory once.
Step by step
How to work out the tokens per second of a Radeon R9 390X
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.
-
01
Find the model in the table
The table lists 337 models this Radeon R9 390X can run. Search by name, or by size — typing 27b matches on the parameter count even when the name never states it.
-
02
Set the context length you will actually use
Longer conversations cost memory on top of the weights. With 8 GB to work in, that is frequently the difference between a model fitting and not.
-
03
Set a minimum quality if you need one
Each model is shown at the best compression this card can hold. A minimum quality hides the ones that only fit by being squeezed further than you would accept.
-
04
Take the range as the answer
Each speed is an estimate for a single conversation, with a range beneath it — 127 tok/s on Gemma 3 QAT 1B at the top end here. The same card and model vary by thirty to fifty per cent between inference runtimes.
-
05
Check the headroom before you decide
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.
-
06
Open the model to compare cards
Following a model through to its own page lists all the hardware that can run it, so you can see where the Radeon R9 390X sits against the alternatives.
Answers
Radeon R9 390X — common questions
How many tokens per second does a Radeon R9 390X produce?
It depends on the model. On a Radeon R9 390X the fastest model we track is Gemma 3 QAT 1B at about 127 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.
Can a Radeon R9 390X run a 7B model?
Yes. For example a Radeon R9 390X runs MetaMath 7B (LLaMa finetune) at Q4_K_M, using about 6.5 GB of memory and generating around 41.8 tokens per second.
Can a Radeon R9 390X run a 13B model?
Yes. For example a Radeon R9 390X runs Gemma 4 12B at Q3_K_M, using about 6.5 GB of memory and generating around 28.7 tokens per second.
How much memory does a Radeon R9 390X have?
A Radeon R9 390X 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.
What is the memory bandwidth of a Radeon R9 390X?
The Radeon R9 390X has 384 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.
What type of memory does a Radeon R9 390X use?
It uses GDDR5 clocked at 1.5 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.
Who makes the Radeon R9 390X?
The Radeon R9 390X is a AMD product, with the chip manufactured by TSMC, on a 28 nm process.
When was the Radeon R9 390X released?
The Radeon R9 390X was released in June 2015.
How much power does a Radeon R9 390X use?
The Radeon R9 390X has a rated board power of 275 W, and a 600 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.
How much cache does a Radeon R9 390X have?
The Radeon R9 390X 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.
Does the Radeon R9 390X support CUDA?
No. CUDA is NVIDIA-only, and the Radeon R9 390X 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.
What bus interface does the Radeon R9 390X 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.
Is the Radeon R9 390X 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.
Can a Radeon R9 390X run a model that does not fit in its memory?
Offloading past the card's 8 GB is possible and usually a false economy: the system-memory portion is slow enough to dominate the result.
Would two Radeon R9 390X cards be twice as fast?
No. A second Radeon R9 390X 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.
What AI models can a Radeon R9 390X run?
337 of the 679 open-weight language models we track fit on a Radeon R9 390X 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.
What is the largest AI model a Radeon R9 390X can run?
The largest model in our catalogue that fits on a Radeon R9 390X is Baichuan 1-13B at 13.3B parameters, compressed to Q3_K_M. It generates roughly 25.8 tokens per second and needs about 7.2 GB of the card's memory.
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.