Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 5600

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5600, which features GPU core speed of 1375 MHz, and 6144 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 192-bit bus. It also is made up of 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 5600		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 5600 should be 12% faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		294912 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 30912 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5600 should be quite a bit (about 49%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5600 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5600		88000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (197%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.