ION 2 vs Radeon 520
Primary details
GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.
| Place in the ranking | 876 | not rated |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | not in top-100 |
| Power efficiency | 2.82 | no data |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 (2011−2020) | Tesla 2.0 (2007−2013) |
| GPU code name | Banks | GT218 |
| Market segment | Laptop | Laptop |
| Release date | 18 April 2017 (7 years ago) | 3 June 2008 (16 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 cores | 320 | 16 |
| Core clock speed | 1030 MHz | 500 MHz |
| Number of transistors | 690 million | 260 million |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 50 Watt | 20 Watt |
| Texture fill rate | 20.60 | 4.000 |
| Floating-point processing power | 0.6592 TFLOPS | 0.03424 TFLOPS |
| ROPs | 8 | 4 |
| TMUs | 20 | 8 |
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).
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x8 | PCIe 2.0 x16 |
| Supplementary power connectors | None | no data |
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 | System Shared |
| Maximum RAM amount | 2 GB | System Shared |
| Memory bus width | 64 Bit | System Shared |
| Memory clock speed | 1125 MHz | System Shared |
| Memory bandwidth | 36 GB/s | no data |
| 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 | No outputs | No outputs |
API compatibility
List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.
| DirectX | 12 (11_1) | 11.1 (10_1) |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | 4.1 |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | 3.3 |
| OpenCL | 1.2 | 1.1 |
| Vulkan | 1.2.131 | N/A |
| CUDA | - | 1.2 |
Synthetic benchmark performance
Non-gaming benchmark results comparison. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
3DMark Vantage Performance
3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.
Pros & cons summary
| Recency | 18 April 2017 | 3 June 2008 |
| Chip lithography | 28 nm | 40 nm |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 50 Watt | 20 Watt |
Radeon 520 has an age advantage of 8 years, and a 42.9% more advanced lithography process.
ION 2, on the other hand, has 150% lower power consumption.
We couldn't decide between Radeon 520 and ION 2. 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.
