GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB will be 192% faster than the Radeon R9 290X in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 614298 (192%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB will be much (about 151%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 212000 (151%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is quite a bit (about 176%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 89920 (176%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.