GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1717 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT will be a small bit (approximately 5%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6968 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (more or less 31%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 5500 XT, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17120 (31%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.