Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1925 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a speed of 2250 MHz on this specific model. It features 5120 SPUs along with 320 Texture Address Units 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6950 XT should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is quite a bit (about 670%) faster with regards to AF 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 using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6950 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.