Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500, which features a core clock speed of 1670 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a little bit superior to the Radeon RX 5500 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 34624 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is quite a bit (approximately 24%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28560 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.