Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 295X2		21205 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 15385 (264%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6990 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 320000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (about 125%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6990. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 198976 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is a lot (more or less 145%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6990, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 77184 (145%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 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 worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.