Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a core clock speed of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 193 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 will be 117% quicker than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 172544 (117%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be just a bit (approximately 10%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a lot (approximately 38%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 290, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (38%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.