Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2580 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6950 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 126%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (approximately 108%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6950, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (108%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.