Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features GPU core speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be much (more or less 70%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62296 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25344 (86%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output 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 maximum fill rate.