Radeon HD 6950 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6990, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 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 6950		3240 points
	Difference: 2580 (80%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be 100% quicker than the Radeon HD 6950 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 126%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6950. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 should be much (about 108%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6950, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27520 (108%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in one second.

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