Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 2055 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 2190 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 11% faster than the Radeon RX 6650 XT in general, because of 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 106%) more effective at texture 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

The Radeon RX 6650 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 157%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.