Radeon HD 6990M vs Radeon HD 7970

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 6990M and Radeon HD 7970, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 6990M stacks up against Radeon HD 7970, check out specs charts below.

Radeon HD 6990M is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon HD 6990M is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon HD 6990M here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 6990M Radeon HD 7970
Power consumption (TDP) 100 Watt 300 Watt
Interface MXM-B (3.0) PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors None 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 3 GB
Display Connectors No outputs 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7970 has 200% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 6990M.
  • Radeon HD 6990M is connected by MXM-B (3.0), and Radeon HD 7970 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Radeon HD 7970 has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 6990M.
  • Radeon HD 6990M is used in Laptops, and Radeon HD 7970 - in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 6990M is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 7970 - with GCN.
  • Radeon HD 6990M is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 7970 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 7970 is 475 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 6990M.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 14−16 35−40
ultra / 1080p 8−9 21−24
QHD / 1440p 3−4 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11
low / 720p 30−33 60−65
medium / 1080p 16−18 40−45
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7970 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 140% more, than Radeon HD 6990M.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 6990M Radeon HD 7970
Architecture Terascale 2 GCN
Code name Blackcomb XTX Tahiti XT
Type Laptop Desktop
Release date 12 July 2011 22 December 2011
Pipelines 1120 2048
Core clock speed 715 MHz
Boost Clock 925 MHz
Transistor count 1,700 million 4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 40.04 118.4
Floating-point performance 1,601.6 gflops 3,789 gflops
Length 274 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 384 Bit
Memory clock speed 900 MHz 1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth 115.2 GB/s 264 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX 11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.0 5.1
OpenGL 4.4 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 1.2
Vulkan N/A
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 2.1 x16
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 485 Mh/s
Laptop size large
Eyefinity +
Design reference
CrossFire +
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 20.71 Mh/s
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