Radeon HD 8730A vs GeForce 8600 GT

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking1309not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency0.47no data
ArchitectureTesla (2006−2010)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameG84Mars
Market segmentDesktopLaptop
Release date17 April 2007 (17 years ago)1 April 2013 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$159 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

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 cores32384
Core clock speed540 MHz650 MHz
Boost clock speedno data700 MHz
Number of transistors289 million950 million
Manufacturing process technology80 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)47 Wattno data
Texture fill rate8.64016.80
Floating-point processing power0.07616 TFLOPS0.5376 TFLOPS
ROPs88
TMUs1624

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 x16PCIe 3.0 x8
Length170 mmno data
Width1-slotno data
Supplementary power connectorsNoneno data
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 typeGDDR3DDR3
Maximum RAM amount512 MB1 GB
Standard memory config per GPU256 MBno data
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed700 MHz1000 MHz
Memory bandwidth22.4 GB/s32 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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x S-VideoNo outputs

API compatibility

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

DirectX11.1 (10_0)12 (11_1)
Shader Model4.05.1
OpenGL2.14.6
OpenCL1.11.2
VulkanN/A1.2.131
CUDA1.1-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 17 April 2007 1 April 2013
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 1 GB
Chip lithography 80 nm 28 nm

HD 8730A has an age advantage of 5 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 185.7% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce 8600 GT and Radeon HD 8730A. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that GeForce 8600 GT is a desktop card while Radeon HD 8730A 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 GeForce 8600 GT
GeForce 8600 GT
AMD Radeon HD 8730A
Radeon HD 8730A

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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