Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 7810 (134%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon RX 580 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be a little bit (approximately 14%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6990. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21648 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is superior to the Radeon RX 580, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12896 (32%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can 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 Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.