Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs GeForce GTX 480

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking	433	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation	1.65	no data
Power efficiency	2.92	no data
Architecture	Fermi (2010−2014)	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code name	GF100	Tahiti
Market segment	Desktop	Desktop
Design	no data	reference
Release date	26 March 2010 (14 years ago)	22 June 2012 (12 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)	$499	$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	480	2048
Core clock speed	700 MHz	no data
Boost clock speed	no data	1050 MHz
Number of transistors	3,100 million	4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology	40 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	250 Watt	250 Watt
Maximum GPU temperature	105 °C	no data
Texture fill rate	42.06	134.4
Floating-point processing power	1.345 TFLOPS	4.301 TFLOPS
ROPs	48	32
TMUs	60	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	16x 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" (111 mm) (11.1 cm)	no data
Width	2-slot	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-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	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	1536 MB	3 GB
Memory bus width	384 Bit	384 Bit
Memory clock speed	1848 MHz (3696 data rate)	1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth	177.4 GB/s	288 GB/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	Two Dual Link DVI, Mini HDMI	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Multi monitor support	+	no data
Eyefinity	-	+
HDMI	+	+
HDCP	+	-
Maximum VGA resolution	2048x1536	no data
Audio input for HDMI	Internal	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	12 (11_0)	DirectX® 11
Shader Model	5.1	5.1
OpenGL	4.2	4.6
OpenCL	1.1	1.2
Vulkan	N/A	-
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	26 March 2010	22 June 2012
Maximum RAM amount	1536 MB	3 GB
Chip lithography	40 nm	28 nm

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