Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 1925 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 5120 SPUs, 320 Texture Address Units, and 128 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 6950 XT should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7970 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 325824 (123%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT will be a lot (about 420%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 497600 (420%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT will be a lot (about 732%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's 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 ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.