Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs GeForce 9800 GTX

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking	893	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	0.07	no data
Power efficiency	0.99	no data
Architecture	Tesla (2006−2010)	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code name	G92	Tahiti
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Design	no data	reference
Release date	28 March 2008 (16 years ago)	22 June 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$299	$499

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	128	2048
Core clock speed	675 MHz	no data
Boost clock speed	no data	1050 MHz
Number of transistors	754 million	4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology	65 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	140 Watt	250 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	105 °C	no data
Texture fill rate	43.20	134.4
Floating-point processing power	0.4321 TFLOPS	4.301 TFLOPS
ROPs	16	32
TMUs	64	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	PCI-E 2.0	PCIe 2.1 x16
Interface	PCIe 2.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	267 mm	274 mm
Height	4.376" (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	2x 6-pin	1x 6-pin + 1x 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	GDDR3	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	3 GB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	384 Bit
Memory clock speed	1100 MHz	1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth	70.4 GB/s	288 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 Connectors	HDTVDual Link DVI	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	+	no data
Eyefinity	-	+
HDMI	Via Adapter	+
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	S/PDIF	no data

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	11.1 (10_0)	DirectX® 11
Shader Model	4.0	5.1
OpenGL	2.1	4.6
OpenCL	1.1	1.2
Vulkan	N/A	-
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	28 March 2008	22 June 2012
Maximum RAM amount	512 MB	3 GB
Chip lithography	65 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	140 Watt	250 Watt

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