Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 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 R9 290		9876 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 4056 (70%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (21%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (about 25%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be just a bit (about 4%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 290, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1920 (4%)

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 transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.