GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6990, which has GPU clock speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 295 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 96224 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (approximately 73%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (approximately 65%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 295, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20864 (65%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.