Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also makes use of 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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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 R9 270X		6590 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 770 (13%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 195 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 79% faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (more or less 99%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79360 (99%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21120 (66%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.