Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features GPU clock speed of 2200 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR6 memory set to run at 2250 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 1024 Stream Processors, 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 HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 116544 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is just a bit (approximately 19%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is superior to the Radeon HD 7970, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (138%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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