GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 is 15% faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall, 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 (more or less 5%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is the winner, by far. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.