GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 3060, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48640 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is just a bit (about 16%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19840 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be quite a bit (about 24%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (24%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip 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 colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.