Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features a GPU core clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 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 R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 270 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 31744 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (about 96%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be quite a bit (about 144%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 270, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.