Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a clock frequency of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19456 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be quite a bit (about 170%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88600 (170%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 5850, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (203%)

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 over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends 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 max fill rate.