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Intro
The GeForce GTX 590 comes with clock speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 855 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6990, which has a clock frequency of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.
(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)Power, Temperatures and Theoretical Benchmarks
Power Consumption (Max TDP)
| GeForce GTX 590 |  | 365 Watts |
| Radeon HD 6990 |  | 375 Watts |
Memory Bandwidth
The GeForce GTX 590, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6990 overall. (explain)
| GeForce GTX 590 | | 328320 MB/sec |
| Radeon HD 6990 | | 320000 MB/sec |
Texel Rate
The Radeon HD 6990 is a lot (approximately 105%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)| Radeon HD 6990 | | 159360 Mtexels/sec |
| GeForce GTX 590 | | 77696 Mtexels/sec |
Pixel Rate
The GeForce GTX 590 will be a bit (approximately 10%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6990, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)| GeForce GTX 590 | | 58272 Mpixels/sec |
| Radeon HD 6990 | | 53120 Mpixels/sec |
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
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords, and might not be the exact same card listed on this page.| GeForce GTX 590 | Radeon HD 6990 |
Specifications
| Model | GeForce GTX 590 | Radeon HD 6990 |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | nVidia | ATi |
| Year | March 2011 | March 2011 |
| Code Name | GF110 | Antilles |
| Fab Process | 40 nm | 40 nm |
| Bus | PCIe 2.0 x16 | PCIe 2.1 x16 |
| Memory | 1536 MB (x2) | 2048 MB (x2) |
| Core Speed | 607 MHz (x2) | 830 MHz (x2) |
| Shader Speed | 1215 MHz (x2) | (N/A) MHz (x2) |
| Memory Speed | 855 MHz (x2) | 1250 MHz (x2) |
| Unified Shaders | 512 (x2) | 1536 (x2) |
| Texture Mapping Units | 64 (x2) | 96 (x2) |
| Render Output Units | 48 (x2) | 32 (x2) |
| Bus Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 384-bit (x2) | 256-bit (x2) |
| DirectX Version | DirectX 11 | DirectX 11 |
| OpenGL Version | OpenGL 4.1 | OpenGL 4.1 |
| Power (Max TDP) | 365 watts | 375 watts |
| Shader Model | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Bandwidth | 328320 MB/sec | 320000 MB/sec |
| Texel Rate | 77696 Mtexels/sec | 159360 Mtexels/sec |
| Pixel Rate | 58272 Mpixels/sec | 53120 Mpixels/sec |
Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.
Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.