Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also 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 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be much (more or less 28%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32696 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be quite a bit (more or less 86%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25344 (86%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.