Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon RX 6500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which features a core clock frequency of 2200 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2250 MHz. It also features a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 6 nm design. It 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 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 44 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 6500 XT should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		147456 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19456 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be much (approximately 170%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88600 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6500 XT should be a lot (more or less 203%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 6500 XT		70400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (203%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of 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 fill rate is also dependant on many 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.