Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 is 108% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot (more or less 134%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high 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 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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.