Home / AMD / AMD Radeon R9 360 OEM: Performance and Specs

AMD Radeon R9 360 OEM

AMD Radeon R9 360 OEM: Overview and Analysis of an Obsolete GPU in 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon R9 360 OEM is a graphics card released in 2015, which still occasionally appears in budget builds. Despite its age, it remains of interest to users looking for an inexpensive solution for basic tasks. This article will analyze its architecture, performance, and relevance in 2025.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R9 360 OEM is built on the GCN 1.0 (Graphics Core Next) microarchitecture, specifically on the Tobago Pro chip. This is the third generation of GCN, optimized for a balance between performance and energy efficiency.

Manufacturing Process: The 28-nanometer process from TSMC was standard at the time of its release, but in 2025, it lags behind today's 5-nanometer and 6-nanometer solutions.

Unique Features:

- Support for DirectX 12 (Feature Level 12_0) and OpenGL 4.4.

- AMD Mantle technology (now outdated) and TrueAudio for improving sound in games.

- Lacks compatibility with modern features such as ray tracing (RTX), FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), or DLSS counterparts.

Conclusion: The architecture is morally obsolete but suitable for basic tasks and older games.

2. Memory: Type, Volume, and Impact on Performance

Memory Type: GDDR5 — the standard for budget GPUs in the 2010s.

Volume: 2 GB. This is sufficient for office applications and less demanding games at low settings.

Bandwidth: A 128-bit bus and a frequency of 1500 MHz (effective — 6000 MHz) provide 96 GB/s. In comparison, modern cards with GDDR6X reach over 900 GB/s.

Issues:

- The small memory size limits textures in games released after 2020.

- In professional applications (e.g., Blender), 2 GB is critically low.

3. Gaming Performance: What Can Be Run in 2025?

1080p (Low/Medium settings):

- CS:2: 40-50 FPS (without anti-aliasing).

- Fortnite: 30-35 FPS (Performance mode).

- GTA V: 45-55 FPS (medium settings).

- Hogwarts Legacy (2023): 15-20 FPS (minimum) — unplayable.

1440p and 4K: Not recommended — insufficient memory and low computing power.

Ray Tracing: Not supported in hardware. Software emulation (if available) would drop FPS to 1-5 frames.

Advice: The card is suitable for retro game emulators (up to 2015) and indie projects.

4. Professional Tasks: Video Editing, 3D Modeling, and Computing

Video Editing:

- In Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, rendering is possible through OpenCL, but 2 GB of memory causes lag when working with 4K materials.

- Using proxy files is recommended.

3D Modeling:

- Blender Cycles (OpenCL): Rendering simple scenes will take 3-5 times longer than on modern GPUs.

Scientific Calculations:

- Support for OpenCL 2.0 allows the card to be used for simple tasks, but performance is not competitive.

Conclusion: The GPU is only suitable for learning the basics of 3D graphics or working on light projects.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 100W — a modest figure even for 2025.

Recommendations:

- Power Supply: 400W (with some margin).

- Cooling: A standard cooler is adequate, but in poorly ventilated cases, overheating (up to 85°C under load) is possible.

- Case: At least 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust fan.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues from 2015-2016:

- NVIDIA GTX 950: Better in DirectX 11 (+15% FPS), but worse in Vulkan.

- AMD R7 370: Similar performance, but with 4 GB of memory.

- Intel Arc A310 (2022): By 2025, even budget modern cards (e.g., A310 for $120) outperform the R9 360 OEM by 3-4 times.

Conclusion: The R9 360 OEM falls behind even the cheapest new GPUs of 2025.

7. Practical Advice

Power Supply: 450-500W (e.g., Corsair CV450).

Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x16 — works on PCIe 4.0/5.0, but with no speed increase.

- Drivers: Official support from AMD has ceased. Use the latest available (2023) or community modifications.

- OS: Windows 10/11 (with limitations), Linux (with open AMDGPU drivers).

Notes:

- Avoid builds with Ryzen 5 7600X processors — the GPU will become a "bottleneck".

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price (if you find a new one — around $50-70).

- Quiet operation in office scenarios.

- Support for MultiMonitor (up to 4 displays).

Cons:

- Insufficient memory for modern tasks.

- Lack of FSR technology and ray tracing.

- Limited driver support.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the R9 360 OEM Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Office PCs, where graphics are not required.

2. Retro Game Enthusiasts, building systems from the 2000s to 2010s.

3. Temporary Solutions when the main card is broken.

Why You Shouldn't Buy for Gaming in 2025: Even new entry-level GPUs like the Intel Arc A310 or AMD Radeon RX 6400 ($120-150) offer 3-4 times the performance and support for modern technologies.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon R9 360 OEM is an archaic but enduring GPU. In 2025, it finds application only in niche scenarios. If your budget is limited to $100, it's better to consider used cards like the RX 570 (8 GB) or GTX 1060 — they will provide greater comfort in gaming and work.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

May 2015

Model Name

Radeon R9 360 OEM

Generation

Pirate Islands

Base Clock

1000MHz

Boost Clock

1050MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

2,080 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1625MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

104.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

16.80 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

50.40 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

100.8 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.645 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

768

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

85W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

6.3

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.645 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Graphics 512SP

1.756 +6.7%

Radeon RX Vega 10 Mobile

1.698 +3.2%

Radeon R9 360 OEM

1.645

Jetson Orin NX 8 GB

1.598 -2.9%

Radeon RX 550X Mobile

1.535 -6.7%