Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1968 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290X should be much faster than the Radeon RX 6600 XT overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be a lot (approximately 79%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111104 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be much (more or less 146%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.