Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500, which comes with GPU core speed of 1670 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be a bit faster than the Radeon RX 5500 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 26624 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is quite a bit (approximately 58%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 5500. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 85040 (58%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 74%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 5500, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39360 (74%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.