GeForce GTS 250 1GB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which features GPU core speed of 830 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 Stream Processors, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 250 1GB		145 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 230 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 will be 355% quicker than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (355%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (more or less 237%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112128 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be quite a bit (more or less 350%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 250 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 250 1GB		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 41312 (350%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.