Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon RX 6900 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6900 XT, which features a clock frequency of 1825 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is comprised of 5120 SPUs, 320 Texture Address Units, and 128 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon RX 6900 XT		300 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 6900 XT should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 285 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		524288 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 348288 (198%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6900 XT is much (approximately 468%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		584000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 481184 (468%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6900 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6900 XT		233600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 204224 (695%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.