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GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

The GeForce RTX 3060 makes use of a 8 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1320 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a frequency of 1875 MHz on this particular model. It features 3584 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be 15% quicker than the Radeon R9 290X in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a small bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060 147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X 140800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 7040 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a lot (about 24%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060 63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X 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

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GeForce RTX 3060

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce RTX 3060 Radeon R9 290X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year February 2021 October 2013
Code Name GA106 Hawaii XT
Memory (Unknown) MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1320 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 1875 GB/s 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 170 watts 300 watts
Bandwidth 368640 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 147840 Mtexels/sec 140800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 63360 Mpixels/sec 51200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 3584 2816
Texture Mapping Units 112 176
Render Output Units 48 64
Bus Type GDDR6 GDDR5
Bus Width 192-bit 512-bit
Fab Process 8 nm 28 nm
Transistors 13250 million 6200 million
Bus PCIe 4.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 12 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.6 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per 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 better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce RTX 3060

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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