GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which features a core clock speed of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 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
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 864 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 131 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 127616 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (more or less 223%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109952 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (more or less 43%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 580, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16064 (43%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of 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 maximum fill rate.