GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6990, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 830 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon HD 6990		375 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (59%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6990, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 178304 (126%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (about 231%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 111200 (231%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (approximately 176%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33856 (176%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.