Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features clock speeds of 2200 MHz on the GPU, and 2250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 143 Watts (134%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 28544 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (more or less 67%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56320 (67%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (approximately 150%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42240 (150%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.