Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 550, which features a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 512 SPUs, 32 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 RX 550		3507 points
	Difference: 2313 (66%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 550		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6990 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon RX 550 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 205312 (179%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (approximately 353%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon RX 550. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 124160 (353%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.