GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which features core 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 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 is 43% faster than the GeForce GTX 295 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (approximately 73%) more effective 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 is much (more or less 65%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 295, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.