Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5700 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5700 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1605 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5700 XT should be 43% faster than the Radeon R9 290 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT should be a lot (approximately 101%) better at AF 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 using 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.