Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 2055 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a speed of 2190 MHz on this particular card. 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 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 6650 XT overall. (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 much (about 106%) more effective 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

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (approximately 157%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.