Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1625 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
Radeon R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 1439 (33%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (71%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 260 Watts (226%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 will be 208% faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216000 (208%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is a lot (about 159%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97760 (159%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35520 (202%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.