Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which features a clock frequency of 2055 MHz and a GDDR6 memory speed of 2190 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6650 XT should be a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 47072 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (more or less 152%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 158544 (152%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT should be quite a bit (more or less 341%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 101664 (341%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.