Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5700 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5700 XT, which has a core clock speed of 1605 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		225 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 5700 XT should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		458752 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 138752 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT will be much (more or less 101%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		256800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 128800 (101%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5700 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		102720 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51520 (101%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.