Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6990, which features GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2580 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is a lot (more or less 126%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (more or less 108%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.