Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Watercooled vs GeForce GTX 850A
Contents
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | 964 | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Power efficiency | 3.13 | no data |
| Architecture | Maxwell (2014−2017) | GCN 5.0 (2017−2020) |
| GPU code name | GM107 | Vega 10 |
| Market segment | Laptop | Workstation |
| Release date | 17 March 2014 (11 years ago) | 13 July 2017 (8 years ago) |
| Launch price (MSRP) | no data | $1,489 |
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 | 640 | 4096 |
| Core clock speed | 902 MHz | 1382 MHz |
| Boost clock speed | 936 MHz | 1600 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 1,870 million | 12,500 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | 14 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 45 Watt | 375 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 37.44 | 409.6 |
| Floating-point processing power | 1.198 TFLOPS | 13.11 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 16 | 64 |
| TMUs | 40 | 256 |
| L1 Cache | 320 KB | 1 MB |
| L2 Cache | 2 MB | 4 MB |
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 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| Length | no data | 267 mm |
| Width | no data | 2-slot |
| Supplementary power connectors | no data | 2x 8-pin |
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 | DDR3 | HBM2 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 2 GB | 16 GB |
| Memory bus width | 128 Bit | 2048 Bit |
| Memory clock speed | 900 MHz | 945 MHz |
| Memory bandwidth | 28.8 GB/s | 483.8 GB/s |
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 | No outputs | 1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort |
| HDMI | - | + |
API and SDK support
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 12 (11_0) | 12 (12_1) |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | 6.4 |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | 4.6 |
| OpenCL | 1.2 | 2.0 |
| Vulkan | 1.1.126 | 1.1.125 |
| CUDA | 5.0 | - |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 17 March 2014 | 13 July 2017 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 2 GB | 16 GB |
| Chip lithography | 28 nm | 14 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 45 Watt | 375 Watt |
GTX 850A has 733.3% lower power consumption.
Vega Frontier Edition Watercooled, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 3 years, a 700% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 100% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between GeForce GTX 850A and Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Watercooled. We've got no test results to judge.
Be aware that GeForce GTX 850A is a notebook graphics card while Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Watercooled is a workstation one.
Other comparisons
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
