Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which uses a 6 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 TAUs 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 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should be 15% quicker than the Radeon HD 6850 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19456 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be much (about 278%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103600 (278%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be quite a bit (about 184%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6850, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45600 (184%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.