Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 3670 (171%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (more or less 374%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 125760 (374%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 295%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39680 (295%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.