Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 1925 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It features 5120 SPUs, 320 TAUs, and 128 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 397824 (207%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be quite a bit (about 594%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 527200 (594%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6950 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 216800 (732%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.