Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be much faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 140544 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (more or less 29%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (approximately 159%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 280X, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (159%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 reach the max fill rate.