Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a bit faster 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 a lot (approximately 87%) better at AF 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 a better choice, 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.