Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1968 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units 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 HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6600 XT will be 2% faster than the Radeon HD 5970 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be a small bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19904 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6600 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33152 (36%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.