GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which uses a 6 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 129 Watts (121%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 5760 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 192%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92640 (192%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (more or less 265%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51136 (265%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.