In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Intel HD Graphics 3000 Desktop are significantly better than the AMD Radeon HD 4290.

The Graphics 3000 has a 150 MHz higher core clock speed than the Radeon HD 4290, but the Radeon HD 4290 has 2 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics 3000. As a result, the Radeon HD 4290 exhibits a 1.1 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the Graphics 3000. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The Graphics 3000 has a 150 MHz higher core clock speed than the Radeon HD 4290, but the Radeon HD 4290 has 2 more Render Output Units than the Graphics 3000. As a result, the Radeon HD 4290 exhibits a 1.1 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the Graphics 3000. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics 3000 was released less than a year after the Radeon HD 4290, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The Radeon HD 4290 has 128 MB video memory, but the Graphics 3000 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The Radeon HD 4290 has 40 Shader Processing Units and the HD Graphics 3000 Desktop has 12. However, the actual shader performance of the Radeon HD 4290 is 18 and the actual shader performance of the Graphics 3000 is 65. The Graphics 3000 having 47 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the Graphics 3000 delivers a slightly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Radeon HD 4290.

The Graphics 3000 transistor size technology is 23 nm (nanometers) smaller than the Radeon HD 4290. This means that the Graphics 3000 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the Radeon HD 4290. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the Graphics 3000 should consume less power than the Radeon HD 4290.

The HD Graphics 3000 Desktop requires 95 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 4290. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 3000, but we do not have a recommended PSU wattage for the Radeon HD 4290.