GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which has GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 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		182 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 193 Watts (106%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 186% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be a lot (more or less 332%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 122496 (332%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (about 229%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 260, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.