GeForce RTX 4090 vs Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | not rated | 1 |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | 6 |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | no data | 18.81 |
| Power efficiency | no data | 15.45 |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 (2011−2020) | Ada Lovelace (2022−2024) |
| GPU code name | Tahiti | AD102 |
| Market segment | Desktop | Desktop |
| Design | reference | no data |
| Release date | 22 June 2012 (12 years ago) | 20 September 2022 (2 years ago) |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $499 | $1,599 |
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 | 16384 |
| Core clock speed | no data | 2235 MHz |
| Boost clock speed | 1050 MHz | 2520 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 4,313 million | 76,300 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | 5 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 250 Watt | 450 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 134.4 | 1,290 |
| Floating-point processing power | 4.301 TFLOPS | 82.58 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 32 | 176 |
| TMUs | 128 | 512 |
| Tensor Cores | no data | 512 |
| Ray Tracing Cores | no data | 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).
| Bus support | PCIe 2.1 x16 | no data |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
| Length | 274 mm | 304 mm |
| Width | 2-slot | 3-slot |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin | 1x 16-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 | GDDR5 | GDDR6X |
| Maximum RAM amount | 3 GB | 24 GB |
| Memory bus width | 384 Bit | 384 Bit |
| Memory clock speed | 1500 MHz | 1313 MHz |
| Memory bandwidth | 288 GB/s | 1.01 TB/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 | 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort | 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a |
| Eyefinity | + | - |
| HDMI | + | + |
Supported technologies
Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.
| CrossFire | + | - |
| FreeSync | + | - |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | DirectX® 11 | 12 Ultimate (12_2) |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | 6.8 |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | 4.6 |
| OpenCL | 1.2 | 3.0 |
| Vulkan | - | 1.3 |
| CUDA | - | 8.9 |
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 22 June 2012 | 20 September 2022 |
| Maximum RAM amount | 3 GB | 24 GB |
| Chip lithography | 28 nm | 5 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 250 Watt | 450 Watt |
HD 7970 GHz Edition has 80% lower power consumption.
RTX 4090, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 10 years, a 700% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 460% more advanced lithography process.
We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and GeForce RTX 4090. We've got no test results to judge.
Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.
Comparisons with similar GPUs
We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.
