GeForce GTX 490 vs Radeon HD 7970

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking378not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation2.38no data
Power efficiency3.77no data
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)Fermi (2010−2014)
GPU code nameTahitiGF100
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Designreferenceno data
Release date22 December 2011 (12 years ago)no data (2024 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$549 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

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 cores2048480
Core clock speedno data608 MHz
Boost clock speed925 MHzno data
Number of transistors4,313 million3,100 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)300 Watt365 Watt
Texture fill rate118.436.48
Floating-point processing power3.789 TFLOPS1.166 TFLOPS
ROPs3248
TMUs12860

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 supportPCIe 2.1 x16no data
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 2.0 x16
Length274 mm279 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin2x 8-pin

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 amount6 GB1536 MB
Memory bus width384 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1375 MHz854 MHz
Memory bandwidth264 GB/s164.0 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 Connectors1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort3x DVI, 1x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity+-
HDMI+-

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.

DirectXDirectX® 1112 (11_0)
Shader Model5.15.1
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.21.1
Vulkan-N/A
CUDA-2.0

Pros & cons summary


Maximum RAM amount 6 GB 1536 MB
Chip lithography 28 nm 40 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 300 Watt 365 Watt

HD 7970 has a 300% higher maximum VRAM amount, a 42.9% more advanced lithography process, and 21.7% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 7970 and GeForce GTX 490. 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 7970
Radeon HD 7970
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 490
GeForce GTX 490

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.


4.1 300 votes

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3.3 26 votes

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Questions & comments

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