Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features clock speeds of 1717 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 164 Watts (126%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon RX 5500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 26624 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon RX 5500 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80904 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37856 (69%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across 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 type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.