GeForce RTX 3090 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3090 should in theory be much better than the Radeon R9 290X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3090 will be a lot (more or less 225%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 316760 (225%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3090 is quite a bit (about 205%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 290X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.