Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 2055 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory running 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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 124 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X will be 11% faster than the Radeon RX 6650 XT in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT should be much (more or less 87%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122240 (87%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT should be much (about 157%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.