Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which comes with core clock speeds of 1968 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon RX 6600 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 1856 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be quite a bit (approximately 113%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 133504 (113%)

Pixel Rate

If using 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 HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96352 (326%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.