Radeon HD 8790M vs 540

Place in performance ranking	685	697
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.29	0.34
Architecture	GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)	GCN (2011−2017)
GPU code name	Lexa	Mars XTX
Market segment	Desktop	Laptop
Release date	26 March 2019 (5 years ago)	16 November 2012 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$79	no data
Current price	$1233 (15.6x MSRP)	$460

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

HD 8790M has 17% better value for money than Radeon 540.

Detailed specifications

General performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider their benchmark and gaming test results. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	512	384
Core clock speed	1100 MHz	850 MHz
Boost clock speed	1124 MHz	900 MHz
Number of transistors	2,200 million	950 million
Manufacturing process technology	14 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	50 Watt	unknown
Texture fill rate	35.97	21.60
Floating-point performance	no data	691.2 gflops

Form factor & compatibility

Information on Radeon 540 and Radeon HD 8790M compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop video cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility). For notebook video cards it's notebook size, connection slot and bus, if the video card is inserted into a slot instead of being soldered to the notebook motherboard.

Laptop size	no data	medium sized
Interface	PCIe 3.0 x8	MXM-A (3.0)
Length	145 mm	no data
Width	2-slot	no data
Supplementary power connectors	None	None

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	2 GB	2 GB
Memory bus width	64 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	7000 MHz	4500 MHz
Memory bandwidth	56 GB/s	64 GB/s
Shared memory	no data	-

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	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort	No outputs
HDMI	+	no data

API compatibility

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

DirectX	12 (12_0)	12 (11_1)
Shader Model	6.4	5.1
OpenGL	4.6	4.6
OpenCL	2.0	1.2
Vulkan	1.2.131	1.2.131

Synthetic benchmark performance

Non-gaming benchmark performance comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

Radeon 540 3.52
+4.5%

HD 8790M 3.37

540 outperforms HD 8790M by 4% based on our aggregated benchmark results.

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 25%

Radeon 540 1361
+4.3%

HD 8790M 1305

540 outperforms HD 8790M by 4% in Passmark.