Radeon HD 6950 2GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (about 126%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (approximately 108%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (108%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.