Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which has clock speeds of 1717 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 170 Watts (131%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be just a bit (more or less 7%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10296 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is just a bit (about 7%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 290X, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (7%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.