Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon RX 6650 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6650 XT, which has a core clock frequency of 2055 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 2190 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 6650 XT should in theory be a little bit superior to 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 should be a lot (about 122%) more effective at AF 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 344%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.