Radeon R9 M290X vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features GPU core speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 1024 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be a lot (about 107%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72800 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (159%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture units by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.