Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which makes use of a 6 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 will be 19% faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be quite a bit (approximately 67%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by far. (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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.