Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which makes use of a 6 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM runs at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7870 should be a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 76%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be quite a bit (approximately 120%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (120%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.