Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1717 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this particular model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is quite a bit (more or less 70%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62296 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a lot (approximately 86%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25344 (86%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.