GeForce 720M vs GT 420M

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking1096not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency3.20no data
ArchitectureFermi (2010−2014)Fermi 2.0 (2010−2014)
GPU code nameGF108GF117
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date3 September 2010 (14 years ago)1 April 2013 (11 years ago)

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 cores9696
Core clock speed500 MHz625 MHz
Number of transistors585 million585 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)23 Watt33 Watt
Texture fill rate8.00010.00
Floating-point processing power0.192 TFLOPS0.24 TFLOPS
ROPs48
TMUs1616

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).

Laptop sizemedium sizedno data
InterfacePCIe 2.0 x16PCIe 2.0 x16

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 typeDDR3DDR3
Maximum RAM amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width128 Bit64 Bit
Memory clock speed800 MHz800 MHz
Memory bandwidth25.6 GB/s12.8 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 ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 API12 (11_0)
Shader Model5.15.1
OpenGL4.54.6
OpenCL1.11.1
VulkanN/AN/A
CUDA+2.1

Pros & cons summary


Recency 3 September 2010 1 April 2013
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 23 Watt 33 Watt

GT 420M has 43.5% lower power consumption.

GeForce 720M, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 2 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 42.9% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce GT 420M and GeForce 720M. 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.

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NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M
GeForce GT 420M
NVIDIA GeForce 720M
GeForce 720M

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


2.7 121 vote

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3.1 91 vote

Rate GeForce 720M on a scale of 1 to 5:

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Questions & comments

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