Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1925 MHz, and 16384 MB of GDDR6 memory running at 2250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 5120 Stream Processors, 320 TAUs, and 128 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (91%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 436224 (284%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be much (approximately 670%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 536000 (670%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is much (approximately 670%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 214400 (670%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.