GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which has clock speeds of 1717 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (12%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a lot (about 38%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41896 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12256 (22%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (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 its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.