Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 memory running at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7950 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 92544 (63%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (approximately 57%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (175%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.