GeForce RTX 3050 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce RTX 3050 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 90624 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be just a bit (approximately 13%) better at AF than the GeForce RTX 3050. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16640 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the GeForce RTX 3050, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1536 (3%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.