Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has core speeds of 2200 MHz on the GPU, and 2250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be quite a bit (about 179%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90400 (179%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 6870, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.