Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has GPU clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 memory running at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 1024 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 83 Watts (78%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 285 should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 28544 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (approximately 37%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37984 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the Radeon R9 285, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41024 (140%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.