Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5500 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 37376 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 will be a lot (more or less 65%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58160 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 will be quite a bit (approximately 81%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23840 (81%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.