Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features GPU core 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 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, 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 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 will be much (more or less 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be a lot (approximately 175%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.