Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which comes with a clock speed of 1968 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon RX 6600 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be a lot (more or less 97%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123904 (97%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be a lot (about 146%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 74752 (146%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 max fill rate.