Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features a clock frequency of 1717 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5500 XT should be 49% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is a lot (more or less 89%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71096 (89%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22944 (72%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.