GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be 15% quicker than the Radeon R9 290 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 will be a little bit (more or less 16%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19840 (16%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3060 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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