Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which has a clock frequency of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 6 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 187 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 108544 (74%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (approximately 65%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon RX 6500 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91200 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 32%) better at FSAA than the Radeon RX 6500 XT, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (32%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.