Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which makes use of a 6 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

Both cards have the exact same texel rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at anisotropic filtering. (explain)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.