Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a clock speed of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 6 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 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 HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6500 XT is 10% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be much (approximately 179%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90400 (179%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		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 in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 applied per second. This is worked out 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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