Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs GeForce GTX 970M

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	355	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Power efficiency	12.74	no data
Architecture	Maxwell 2.0 (2014−2019)	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code name	GM204	Tahiti
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop
Design	no data	reference
Release date	7 October 2014 (10 years ago)	22 June 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$2,560.89	$499

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

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	1280	2048
Core clock speed	924 MHz	no data
Boost clock speed	1038 MHz	1050 MHz
Number of transistors	5,200 million	4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	unknown	250 Watt
Texture fill rate	83.04	134.4
Floating-point processing power	2.657 TFLOPS	4.301 TFLOPS
ROPs	48	32
TMUs	80	128

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).

Laptop size	large	no data
Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
Interface	MXM-B (3.0)	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	no data	274 mm
Width	no data	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	None	1x 6-pin + 1x 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	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	3 GB	3 GB
Memory bus width	192 Bit	384 Bit
Memory clock speed	2500 MHz	1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth	120 GB/s	288 GB/s
Shared memory	-	-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	No outputs	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity	-	+
VGA аnalog display support	+	no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) support	+	no data
HDMI	+	+
G-SYNC support	+	-

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

CrossFire	-	+
FreeSync	-	+
GameStream	+	-
GeForce ShadowPlay	+	-
GPU Boost	2.0	no data
GameWorks	+	-
H.264, VC1, MPEG2 1080p video decoder	+	-
Optimus	+	-
BatteryBoost	+	-
Ansel	+	-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (12_1)	DirectX® 11
Shader Model	6.4	5.1
OpenGL	4.5	4.6
OpenCL	1.1	1.2
Vulkan	1.1.126	-
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency

7 October 2014

22 June 2012

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