GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19456 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (more or less 83%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (267%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.