Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1717 MHz. The GDDR6 memory works at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a little bit (approximately 7%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10296 (7%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.