Radeon E8870 vs Quadro NVS 420

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Primary details

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

Place in the rankingnot ratednot rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
ArchitectureTesla (2006−2010)GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code nameG98Saturn
Market segmentWorkstationLaptop
Release date20 January 2009 (15 years ago)29 September 2015 (9 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$131.43 no data

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 cores8768
Core clock speed550 MHz1000 MHz
Number of transistors210 million2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology65 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)40 Watt75 Watt
Texture fill rate4.40048.00
Floating-point processing power0.0224 TFLOPS1.536 TFLOPS
ROPs416
TMUs848

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).

InterfacePCIe 1.0 x16MXM-B (3.0)
Width1-slotno data
Supplementary power connectorsNoneNone

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 typeGDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount256 MB4 GB
Memory bus width64 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed700 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth11.2 GB/s96 GB/s

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 ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.1 (10_0)12 (12_0)
Shader Model4.06.3
OpenGL3.34.6
OpenCL1.12.0
VulkanN/A1.2.131
CUDA1.1-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 20 January 2009 29 September 2015
Maximum RAM amount 256 MB 4 GB
Chip lithography 65 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 40 Watt 75 Watt

NVS 420 has 87.5% lower power consumption.

Radeon E8870, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 6 years, a 1500% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 132.1% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Quadro NVS 420 and Radeon E8870. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that Quadro NVS 420 is a workstation card while Radeon E8870 is a notebook one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420
Quadro NVS 420
AMD Radeon E8870
Radeon E8870

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