Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5500, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 memory runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon RX 5500 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 90624 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is a small bit (about 8%) better at AF than the Radeon RX 5500. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is a bit (approximately 1%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6990, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.