GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce RTX 3060 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48640 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a bit (approximately 16%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19840 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is superior to the Radeon R9 290, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (24%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.