Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which has GPU clock speed of 2055 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 RAM set to run at 2190 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		176 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 74 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 6650 XT should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		287072 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 23072 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is quite a bit (more or less 122%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		263040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 144640 (122%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is a lot (about 344%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6650 XT		131520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 101920 (344%)

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

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.