GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which comes with a clock speed of 1717 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a little bit (approximately 5%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.