Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which comes with core clock speeds of 2200 MHz on the GPU, and 2250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 12544 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a lot (about 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70400 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (more or less 175%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (175%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.