Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 2055 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2190 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6650 XT will be 9% faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 23072 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (more or less 122%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 144640 (122%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6650 XT is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 101920 (344%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics 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 number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.