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Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

The Radeon HD 6970 has a clock frequency of 880 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which features core clock speeds of 830 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 HD 6970 3470 points
Difference: 2350 (68%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6970 250 Watts
Radeon HD 6990 375 Watts
Difference: 125 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 82% quicker than the Radeon HD 6970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6970 176000 MB/sec
Difference: 144000 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (more or less 89%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970 84480 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 74880 (89%)

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 HD 6970 28160 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 24960 (89%)

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 6970

Amazon.com

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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 6970 Radeon HD 6990
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year December 2010 March 2011
Code Name Cayman XT Antilles
Memory 2048 MB 2048 MB (x2)
Core Speed 880 MHz 830 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 5500 MHz 5000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 176000 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 84480 Mtexels/sec 159360 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 28160 Mpixels/sec 53120 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1536 1536 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 96 96 (x2)
Render Output Units 32 32 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2640 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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 is also dependant 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.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 6970

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

3 Responses to “Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 6990”
Anonymous says:

[...] [...]

SpamBot says:

Thats a pretty big difference. Bigger than i would have expected.

kimminjoon87 says:

Well can't decide what do buy, wait until have money to buy HD 7970 or HD 6990 =)

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