GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48640 (15%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is a little bit (approximately 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7040 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is much (about 24%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12160 (24%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.