Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1968 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X is 22% faster than the Radeon RX 6600 XT in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be a lot (approximately 79%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111104 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT is much (about 146%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 290X, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 74752 (146%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.