Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1968 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 6600 XT should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be a lot (more or less 141%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147408 (141%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6600 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96096 (322%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.