Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 1968 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon RX 6600 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be quite a bit (about 97%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123904 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be quite a bit (more or less 146%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 74752 (146%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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.