Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which uses a 6 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this specific model. 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 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 179%) faster with regards to texture filtering 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 (more or less 144%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.