Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6600 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6600 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1968 MHz. The GDDR6 memory works at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		160 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be quite a bit (more or less 141%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		251904 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 147408 (141%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6600 XT should be quite a bit (about 322%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6600 XT		125952 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 96096 (322%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.