Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 2055 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a speed of 2190 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 6650 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (about 106%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT should be much (more or less 157%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.