GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units 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 HD 6990		5820 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 2170 (59%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 142592 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 279%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 117360 (279%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (more or less 58%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 480, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19520 (58%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.