Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which features core clock speeds of 2055 MHz on the GPU, and 2190 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon RX 6650 XT overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT will be quite a bit (about 87%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122240 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6650 XT is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.