GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6990 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 127616 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is a lot (more or less 223%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109952 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot (approximately 43%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16064 (43%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can 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 colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.