Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 23 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7850 should be a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (about 156%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 85760 (156%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42880 (156%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 number of texture units 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.