Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which makes use of a 6 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 2200 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 81 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon RX 6500 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
	Difference: 6144 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT will be a lot (approximately 107%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72800 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6500 XT is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43200 (159%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.