GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6990, which has GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 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 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 173 Watts (86%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 is 186% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 208112 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (more or less 284%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 117888 (284%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36992 (229%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number 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 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.