Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which uses a 6 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 memory works at a speed of 2250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 68 Watts (64%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (about 76%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38400 (120%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.