Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which features a clock speed of 2055 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2190 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6650 XT will be 20% quicker than the Radeon R9 280 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 47072 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT will be quite a bit (approximately 152%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 158544 (152%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6650 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 101664 (341%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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