Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Watercooled vs GeForce GTX 980

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking	194	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	10.97	no data
Power efficiency	12.05	no data
Architecture	Maxwell 2.0 (2014−2019)	GCN 5.0 (2017−2020)
GPU code name	GM204	Vega 10
Market segment	Desktop	Workstation
Release date	19 September 2014 (10 years ago)	13 July 2017 (7 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$549	$1,489

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	2048	4096
Core clock speed	1064 MHz	1382 MHz
Boost clock speed	1216 MHz	1600 MHz
Number of transistors	5,200 million	12,500 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	165 Watt	375 Watt
Texture fill rate	155.6	409.6
Floating-point processing power	4.981 TFLOPS	13.11 TFLOPS
ROPs	64	64
TMUs	128	256

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).

Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	267 mm	267 mm
Height	4.376" (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Recommended system power (PSU)	500 Watt	no data
Supplementary power connectors	2x 6-pin	2x 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	HBM2
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	16 GB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	2048 Bit
Memory clock speed	7.0 GB/s	945 MHz
Memory bandwidth	224 GB/s	483.8 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	Dual Link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0, 3x DisplayPort 1.2	1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	4 displays	no data
VGA аnalog display support	+	no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) support	+	no data
HDMI	+	+
HDCP	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
G-SYNC support	+	-
Audio input for HDMI	Internal	no data

Supported technologies

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

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

API compatibility

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

DirectX	12 (12_1)	12 (12_1)
Shader Model	6.4	6.4
OpenGL	4.5	4.6
OpenCL	1.2	2.0
Vulkan	1.1.126	1.1.125
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	19 September 2014	13 July 2017
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	16 GB
Chip lithography	28 nm	14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	165 Watt	375 Watt

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