GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which has GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 43% faster than the GeForce GTX 295 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 96224 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot (more or less 73%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be a lot (approximately 65%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 295, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20864 (65%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.