Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6700 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 2321 MHz, and (Unknown) MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		230 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 6700 XT should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		393216 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 73216 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6700 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 190%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		371360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 243360 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6700 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		148544 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 97344 (190%)

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 moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.