Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which features a GPU core clock speed of 2055 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 2190 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 is 11% quicker than the Radeon RX 6650 XT overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
	Difference: 32928 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT will be quite a bit (about 106%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 135040 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6650 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80320 (157%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.