NVIDIA started GeForce GT 420M sales 3 September 2010. This is a Fermi architecture notebook card based on 40 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at office use. 1 GB of DDR3 memory clocked at 0.8 GHz are supplied, and together with 128 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 25.6 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is a graphics card attached via PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Power consumption is at 23 Watt.

Primary details

Some basic facts about GeForce GT 420M: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in the ranking	1096
Place by popularity	not in top-100
Power efficiency	3.20	of 100.00 (Radeon 890M)
Architecture	Fermi (2010−2014)
GPU code name	GF108
Market segment	Laptop
Release date	3 September 2010 (14 years ago)

Detailed specifications

GeForce GT 420M's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of GeForce GT 420M's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	96	of 21760 (GeForce RTX 5090)
Core clock speed	500 MHz	of 2800 MHz (Playstation 5 Pro GPU)
Number of transistors	585 million	of 208,000 million (B200 SXM 192 GB)
Manufacturing process technology	40 nm	of 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V)
Power consumption (TDP)	23 Watt	of 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate	8.000	of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Floating-point processing power	0.192 TFLOPS	of 109.7 (GeForce RTX 5090)
ROPs	4	of 192 (Radeon RX 7900 XTX)
TMUs	16	of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)

Form factor & compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of GeForce GT 420M and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

Laptop size	medium sized
Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of memory installed on GeForce GT 420M: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory type	DDR3
Maximum RAM amount	1 GB	of 294912 (Radeon Instinct MI325X)
Memory bus width	128 Bit	of 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X)
Memory clock speed	800 MHz	of 20000 (RTX 5000 Ada Generation Mobile)
Memory bandwidth	25.6 GB/s	of 5,171 GB/s (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Shared memory	-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on GeForce GT 420M. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors

No outputs

API compatibility

APIs supported by GeForce GT 420M, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectX	12 API
Shader Model	5.1
OpenGL	4.5	of 4.6 (GeForce RTX 4090)
OpenCL	1.1
Vulkan	N/A
CUDA	+

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of GeForce GT 420M. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

GT 420M 1.03

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

GT 420M 397

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

GT 420M 685

3DMark Vantage Performance

3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.

GT 420M 3051

GeekBench 5 OpenCL

Geekbench 5 is a widespread graphics card benchmark combined from 11 different test scenarios. All these scenarios rely on direct usage of GPU's processing power, no 3D rendering is involved. This variation uses OpenCL API by Khronos Group.

GT 420M 1583

Octane Render OctaneBench

This is a special benchmark measuring graphics card performance in OctaneRender, which is a realistic GPU rendering engine by OTOY Inc., available either as a standalone program, or as a plugin for 3DS Max, Cinema 4D and many other apps. It renders four different static scenes, then compares render times with a reference GPU which is currently GeForce GTX 980. This benchmark has nothing to do with gaming and is aimed at professional 3D graphics artists.

GT 420M 6

Gaming performance

Let's see how good GeForce GT 420M is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

900p	12
Full HD	17

FPS performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077

3−4

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	5−6
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	4−5
Cyberpunk 2077	3−4
Far Cry 5	1−2
Far Cry New Dawn	2−3
Forza Horizon 4	0−1
Hitman 3	5−6
Horizon Zero Dawn	12−14
Red Dead Redemption 2	1−2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	7−8
Watch Dogs: Legion	30−35

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	5−6
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	4−5
Cyberpunk 2077	3−4
Far Cry 5	1−2
Far Cry New Dawn	2−3
Forza Horizon 4	0−1
Hitman 3	5−6
Horizon Zero Dawn	12−14
Red Dead Redemption 2	1−2
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	7−8
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	10−12
Watch Dogs: Legion	30−35

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	5−6
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	4−5
Cyberpunk 2077	3−4
Far Cry 5	1−2
Forza Horizon 4	0−1
Hitman 3	5−6
Horizon Zero Dawn	12−14
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	7−8
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	10−12
Watch Dogs: Legion	30−35

Full HD
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2

1−2

1440p
High Preset

Battlefield 5	1−2
Far Cry New Dawn	1−2

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	1−2
Cyberpunk 2077	1−2
Far Cry 5	1−2
Hitman 3	7−8
Horizon Zero Dawn	4−5
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	0−1
Watch Dogs: Legion	4−5

1440p
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2

4−5

4K
High Preset

Far Cry New Dawn

0−1

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	1−2
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	0−1
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	0−1
Far Cry 5	0−1

4K
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2

2−3

Closest competitors

GeForce GT 420M's performance relative to its closest rivals among notebook graphics cards.

GeForce GT 640M Mac Edition 100.97

Radeon R4 (Beema) 100

Radeon R2 (Stoney Ridge) 100

GeForce GT 420M 100

GeForce GT 335M 96.12

GeForce 9800M GT 96.12

GeForce 8800M GTS 96.12

AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to GeForce GT 420M is Radeon R4 (Beema), which is nearly equal in speed and higher by 3 positions in our ranking.