Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6700 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, which features clock speeds of 2321 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the (Unknown) MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 6700 XT		230 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6700 XT should be 156% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		393216 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 239616 (156%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6700 XT is quite a bit (about 364%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		371360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 291360 (364%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6700 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 7870, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6700 XT		148544 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 116544 (364%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.