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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 features core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

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

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Radeon HD 6990 375 Watts
Difference: 81 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5970 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Difference: 64000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (more or less 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 6990. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6990 159360 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 72640 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be much (about 75%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6990, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6990 53120 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 39680 (75%)

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

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 6990
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 March 2011
Code Name Hemlock XT Antilles
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 2048 MB (x2)
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 830 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 159360 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 53120 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1536 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 96 (x2)
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 40 nm 40 nm
Transistors 2154 million 2640 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

8 Responses to “Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990”
Robert says:

This is wrong! The 6990 has 192 texture units and the 5970 has 160 texture units. They have the same amount of render output units or ROPs.

Query about 5850 - Digit Technology Discussion Forum says:

[...] lesser)but it kill the 6990 in Texel Rate and Pixel Rate for better understanding have a look at Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare 6850 is also a pretty decent card i guess go on with [...]

magbul says:

ATI Radeon HD 5970 Graphics card is recently announced and expected to be the world’s fastest Graphic card is it right.or fake.i saw the comparison between gtx 590 vs radeon hd 5970 and 5970 vs 6990.
it kill the 6990 n gtx 590 in Texel Rate and Pixel Rate.plz reply..because i want to buy that graphic card

emel says:

Robert you dumb check the official AMD site for details !!!

Dr.Hawk says:

Radeon HD 5970 It is considered a V8 engine!

Graphics Card Ranking (Updated Daily) - Page 41 says:

[...] Pixel rate) using a single pci-e slot, regardless if single or dual gpu card.. 5970 > 6990 = Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare 5970 > GTX580 3gb MARS II = GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 5970 – Performance Comparison [...]

فروش کارت گرافیک 5970 با قیمت عالی says:

[...] Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon HD 6990 – Performance Comparison Benchmarks @ Hardware Compare بدون شرح .... پاسخ با نقل قول « [...]

LOL says:

WHERE ATI5970 4GB ?

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