Radeon RX 540X vs HD 7870M

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking702not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency5.96no data
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)GCN 4.0 (2016−2020)
GPU code nameHeathrowPolaris 23
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date24 April 2012 (12 years ago)11 April 2018 (6 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 cores640512
Core clock speed800 MHz1124 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1219 MHz
Number of transistors1,500 million2,200 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm14 nm
Power consumption (TDP)45 Watt50 Watt
Texture fill rate32.0039.01
Floating-point processing power1.024 TFLOPS1.248 TFLOPS
ROPs1616
TMUs4032

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 sizelargelarge
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x8
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone

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 typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GB2 GB
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1000 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth64 GB/s96 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 ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

FreeSync-+

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_1)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.16.4
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.22.0
Vulkan1.2.1311.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 24 April 2012 11 April 2018
Chip lithography 28 nm 14 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 45 Watt 50 Watt

HD 7870M has 11.1% lower power consumption.

RX 540X, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 5 years, and a 100% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 7870M and Radeon RX 540X. 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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AMD Radeon HD 7870M
Radeon HD 7870M
AMD Radeon RX 540X
Radeon RX 540X

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.


2.6 13 votes

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3.6 52 votes

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Questions & comments

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