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Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

The Radeon HD 7970 uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT 130 Watts
Radeon HD 7970 250 Watts
Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 15% faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970 264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT 229376 MB/sec
Difference: 34624 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a lot (more or less 28%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT 151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970 118400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 32696 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT 54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970 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

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Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 5500 XT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 7970 Radeon RX 5500 XT
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year January 2012 December 2019
Code Name Tahiti XT Navi 14 XTX
Memory 3072 MB 8192 MB
Core Speed 925 MHz 1717 MHz
Memory Speed 5500 MHz 3500 GB/s
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 130 watts
Bandwidth 264000 MB/sec 229376 MB/sec
Texel Rate 118400 Mtexels/sec 151096 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 29600 Mpixels/sec 54944 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2048 1408
Texture Mapping Units 128 88
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR6
Bus Width 384-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 7 nm
Transistors 4313 million 6400 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 4.0 ×16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.1 DirectX 12
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.2 OpenGL 4.6

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 7970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 5500 XT

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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