Radeon HD 7970 X2 vs GeForce 8600 GT
Contents
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | 1356 | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 0.01 | no data |
| Power efficiency | 0.54 | no data |
| Architecture | Tesla (2006−2010) | GCN 1.0 (2012−2020) |
| GPU code name | G84 | New Zealand |
| Market segment | Desktop | Desktop |
| Release date | 17 April 2007 (18 years ago) | 31 August 2012 (13 years ago) |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $159 | $899 |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
The higher the ratio, the better. We use the manufacturer's recommended prices.
Performance to price scatter graph
Detailed specifications
General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 32 | 2048 ×2 |
| Core clock speed | 540 MHz | 925 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 289 million | 4,313 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 80 nm | 28 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 47 Watt | 500 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 8.640 | 118.4 ×2 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.07616 TFLOPS | 3.789 TFLOPS ×2 |
| ROPs | 8 | 32 ×2 |
| TMUs | 16 | 128 ×2 |
| L1 Cache | no data | 512 KB |
| L2 Cache | 32 KB | 768 KB |
Form factor & compatibility
Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
| Interface | PCIe 1.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| Length | 170 mm | 292 mm |
| Width | 1-slot | 2-slot |
| Supplementary power connectors | None | 3x 8-pin |
| SLI options | + | - |
VRAM capacity and type
Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.
| Memory type | GDDR3 | GDDR5 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 512 MB | 3 GB ×2 |
| Standard memory config per GPU | 256 MB | no data |
| Memory bus width | 128 Bit | 384 Bit ×2 |
| Memory clock speed | 700 MHz | 1375 MHz |
| Memory bandwidth | 22.4 GB/s | 264.0 GB/s ×2 |
Connectivity and outputs
This section shows the types and number of video connectors on each GPU. The data applies specifically to desktop reference models (for example, NVIDIA’s Founders Edition). OEM partners often modify both the number and types of ports. On notebook GPUs, video‐output options are determined by the laptop’s design rather than the graphics chip itself.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x S-Video | 1x DVI, 4x mini-DisplayPort |
API and SDK support
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 11.1 (10_0) | 12 (11_1) |
| Shader Model | 4.0 | 5.1 |
| OpenGL | 2.1 | 4.6 |
| OpenCL | 1.1 | 1.2 |
| Vulkan | N/A | 1.2.131 |
| CUDA | 1.1 | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 17 April 2007 | 31 August 2012 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 512 MB | 3 GB |
| Chip lithography | 80 nm | 28 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 47 Watt | 500 Watt |
8600 GT has 963.8% lower power consumption.
HD 7970 X2, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 5 years, a 500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 185.7% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between GeForce 8600 GT and Radeon HD 7970 X2. We've got no test results to judge.
Other comparisons
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