Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features GPU clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 1024 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 28544 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (approximately 67%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56320 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (approximately 150%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42240 (150%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.