Radeon HD 6990 vs Radeon R9 280X

Radeon HD 6990
Memory: 2048Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 8 Mar 2011
Radeon HD 6990
Radeon R9 280X
Memory: 3072Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 8 Oct 2013
Radeon R9 280X

Summary

Synthetic performance index

  • Radeon HD 6990
    100%
  • Radeon R9 280X
    102%

Relative performance

Gaming performance index

  • Radeon HD 6990
    100%
  • Radeon R9 280X
    104%

Relative performance

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 6990

Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon R9 280X

125 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 6990 .
This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

No clear winner declared

These graphics cards seems to have comparable performance based on the game benchmark suite used (4 combinations of games and resolutions).


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon HD 6990Radeon R9 280X
GPU NameAntilles (Antilles XT)vsTahiti (Tahiti XTL)
Fab Process40 nmvs28 nm
Die Size389 mm²vs352 mm²
Transistors2,640 millionvs4,313 million
Shaders1536vs2048
Compute Units24vs32
Core clock830 MHzvs850 MHz
ROPs32vs32
TMUs96vs128

Memory Configuration

Radeon HD 6990Radeon R9 280X
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width256 bit x2vs384 bit
Memory Speed1250 MHz
5000 MHz effective
vs1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective
Memory Size2048 Mbvs3072 Mb

Additional details

Radeon HD 6990Radeon R9 280X
TDP375 wattsvs250 watts
Release Date8 Mar 2011vs8 Oct 2013

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon HD 6990
    26.60 GP/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    27.20 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon HD 6990
    79.70 GT/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    109.00 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon HD 6990
    160.00 GB/s
  • Radeon R9 280X
    288.00 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon HD 6990
    2550.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon R9 280X
    3482.00 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better

Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 11

  • Radeon HD 6990
    10720
  • Radeon R9 280X
    10960

Points (higher is better)

Game benchmarks

Bioshock Infinite

DX11, Ultra, DDOD, FXAA

  • Radeon HD 6990
    45
  • Radeon R9 280X
    48

FPS (higher is better)

Bioshock Infinite

DX11, Ultra Quality,DDOD, FX AA

  • Radeon HD 6990
    71
  • Radeon R9 280X
    69

FPS (higher is better)

Crysis 3

DX11,Very High Quality, FXAA

  • Radeon HD 6990
    41
  • Radeon R9 280X
    42

FPS (higher is better)

Medal Of Honor Warfighter

DX11, Ultra Quality, 4xMSAA

  • Radeon HD 6990
    60
  • Radeon R9 280X
    67

FPS (higher is better)