Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 275 Watts (275%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6990 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (approximately 134%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91360 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (more or less 95%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25920 (95%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.