Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 5600 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5600 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1375 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5600 XT should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		344064 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24064 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5600 XT should be quite a bit (more or less 55%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		198000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70000 (55%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5600 XT is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600 XT		88000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (72%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.