Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6700 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 2321 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a speed of 2000 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6700 XT should be much faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6700 XT will be a lot (about 164%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		371360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 230560 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6700 XT is quite a bit (approximately 190%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		148544 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.