GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 234 Watts (166%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 288000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot (about 236%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112000 (236%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (about 349%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41280 (349%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 video 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.