Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which has core speeds of 1717 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon RX 5500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 90624 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a small bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23096 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (7%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 ability to reach the max fill rate.