Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a core clock speed of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2250 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 6 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 140544 (95%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be a lot (more or less 29%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a lot (more or less 159%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 280X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (159%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.