Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a speed of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 5500 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 will be a small bit (approximately 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6160 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is superior to the Radeon R9 290X, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.