Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which has a clock frequency of 2055 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2190 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon RX 6650 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
	Difference: 32928 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (about 106%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 135040 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6650 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80320 (157%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.