Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with 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 features 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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
Radeon HD 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 3670 (171%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6990 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 6790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (approximately 374%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 125760 (374%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6990 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39680 (295%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.