Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which uses a 6 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this card. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 93 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon RX 6500 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 12544 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is much (about 100%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70400 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (175%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many 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.