Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which features a clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 7870 XT		6390 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 570 (10%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (60%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (103%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6990 is 67% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (approximately 79%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70560 (79%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (about 79%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23520 (79%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.