Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features GPU core speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 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 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 89%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71096 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 7870, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22944 (72%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.