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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with a core clock speed of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Radeon HD 6990 375 Watts
Difference: 81 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Difference: 64000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (more or less 46%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6990. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6990 159360 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 72640 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6990 53120 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 39680 (75%)

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

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 6990
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 March 2011
Code Name Hemlock XT Antilles
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB (x2)
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 830 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 159360 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 53120 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1536 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 96 (x2)
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

8 Responses to “Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990”
Robert says:

This is wrong! The 6990 has 192 texture units and the 5970 has 160 texture units. They have the same amount of render output units or ROPs.

Query about 5850 - Digit Technology Discussion Forum says:

[...] lesser)but it kill the 6990 in Texel Rate and Pixel Rate for better understanding have a look at Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare 6850 is also a pretty decent card i guess go on with [...]

magbul says:

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Graphics card is recently announced and expected to be the world’s fastest Graphic card is it right.or fake.i saw the comparison between gtx 590 vs radeon hd 5970 and 5970 vs 6990.
it kill the 6990 n gtx 590 in Texel Rate and Pixel Rate.plz reply..because i want to buy that graphic card

emel says:

Robert you dumb check the official AMD site for details !!!

Dr.Hawk says:

Radeon HD 5970 It is considered a V8 engine!

Graphics Card Ranking (Updated Daily) - Page 41 says:

[...] Pixel rate) using a single pci-e slot, regardless if single or dual gpu card.. 5970 > 6990 = Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare 5970 > GTX580 3gb MARS II = GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5970 – Performance Comparison [...]

فروش کارت گرافیک 5970 با قیمت عالی says:

[...] Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare بدون شرح .... پاسخ با نقل قول « [...]

LOL says:

WHERE ATI5970 4GB ?

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