GeForce 9800 GX2 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		107 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (84%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should be 15% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19456 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be quite a bit (about 83%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64000 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT is quite a bit (approximately 267%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (267%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.