GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a bit (about 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7040 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is superior to the Radeon R9 290X, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.