Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5500, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 40% quicker than the Radeon RX 5500 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 90624 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is a bit (more or less 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18960 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2240 (4%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.