Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5600 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5600 XT, which comes with GPU core speed of 1375 MHz, and 6144 MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also features 2304 Stream Processors, 144 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 5600 XT should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		344064 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24064 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5600 XT is a lot (about 55%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		198000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70000 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5600 XT is superior to the Radeon R9 290, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		88000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (72%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.