GeForce RTX 3090 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 3090 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 638668 (200%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3090 is much (approximately 257%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 329560 (257%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3090 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 105040 (205%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.