Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6800

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6800, which has a core clock speed of 1700 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is comprised of 3840 SPUs, 240 Texture Address Units, and 96 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6800		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 6800 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6800		524288 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 204288 (64%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6800 is quite a bit (more or less 219%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6800		408000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 280000 (219%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6800 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6800		163200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 112000 (219%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.