Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 6970 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 89%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (about 89%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6970, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.