Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units 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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon HD 6990		5820 points
	Difference: 6913 (119%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 6990		24 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 390 8G should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6990 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a bit (more or less 0%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6990. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 640 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10880 (20%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.