Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 6700 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, which has a clock frequency of 2321 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 192-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		230 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6700 XT, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		393216 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 73216 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6700 XT is quite a bit (more or less 190%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		371360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 243360 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6700 XT is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		148544 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 97344 (190%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.