Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which comes with a core clock speed of 1717 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 7 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 superior to the Radeon RX 5500 XT overall. (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 a lot (approximately 28%) faster with regards to AF 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 86%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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