Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which has core speeds of 1925 MHz on the GPU, and 2250 MHz on the 16384 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 5120 SPUs as well as 320 TAUs and 128 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6950 XT will be 284% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 436224 (284%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be much (approximately 670%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 536000 (670%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA 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		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 214400 (670%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.