Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which comes with core 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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6500 XT is 10% faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 13056 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (approximately 179%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 90400 (179%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (about 144%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.