Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 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 290X		10609 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 4789 (82%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (21%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a bit (more or less 13%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18560 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (4%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.