Radeon HD 7970M: specs and benchmarks

Aggregate performance score

Radeon HD 7970M provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 9.26% of a leader's which is GeForce RTX 4090.

Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 7970M sales 24 April 2012. This is a laptop graphics card based on a GCN 1.0 architecture and made with 28 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamers. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.2 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 153.6 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is a graphics card attached via MXM-B (3.0) interface. Power consumption is at 100 Watt.

Primary details

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 7970M: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in the ranking472
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Power efficiency6.35of 100.00 (Radeon 890M)
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameWimbledon
Market segmentLaptop
Release date24 April 2012 (12 years ago)

Detailed specifications

Radeon HD 7970M's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 7970M's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores1280of 21760 (GeForce RTX 5090)
Core clock speed850 MHzof 2670 MHz (Arc B580)
Number of transistors2,800 millionof 208,000 million (B200 SXM 192 GB)
Manufacturing process technology28 nmof 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V)
Power consumption (TDP)100 Wattof 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate68.00of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Floating-point processing power2.176 TFLOPSof 109.7 (GeForce RTX 5090)
ROPs32of 192 (Radeon RX 7900 XTX)
TMUs80of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)

Form factor & compatibility

This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon HD 7970M and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizelarge
InterfaceMXM-B (3.0)
Supplementary power connectorsNone

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 7970M: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GBof 294912 (Radeon Instinct MI325X)
Memory bus width256 Bitof 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X)
Memory clock speed1200 MHzof 20000 (RTX 5000 Ada Generation Mobile)
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/sof 5,171 GB/s (Radeon Instinct MI300X)
Shared memory-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 7970M. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display ConnectorsNo outputs

API compatibility

APIs supported by Radeon HD 7970M, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectX12 (11_1)
Shader Model5.1
OpenGL4.6
OpenCL1.2
Vulkan1.2.131

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 7970M. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

HD 7970M 9.26

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

HD 7970M 3568

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

HD 7970M 5645

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.

HD 7970M 21938

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics

Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.

HD 7970M 4694

3DMark Cloud Gate GPU

Cloud Gate is an outdated DirectX 11 feature level 10 benchmark that was used for home PCs and basic notebooks. It displays a few scenes of some weird space teleportation device launching spaceships into unknown, using fixed resolution of 1280x720. Just like Ice Storm benchmark, it has been discontinued in January 2020 and replaced by 3DMark Night Raid.

HD 7970M 31869

Unigine Heaven 3.0

This is an old DirectX 11 benchmark using Unigine, a 3D game engine by eponymous Russian company. It displays a fantasy medieval town sprawling over several flying islands. Version 3.0 was released in 2012, and in 2013 it was superseded by Heaven 4.0, which introduced several slight improvements, including a newer version of Unigine.

HD 7970M 58

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 7970M is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

900p84
Full HD60

FPS performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077 14−16

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 21−24
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 12−14
Battlefield 5 27−30
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 18−20
Cyberpunk 2077 14−16
Far Cry 5 21−24
Far Cry New Dawn 24−27
Forza Horizon 4 60−65
Hitman 3 16−18
Horizon Zero Dawn 50−55
Metro Exodus 27−30
Red Dead Redemption 2 24−27
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 30−33
Watch Dogs: Legion 60−65

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 21−24
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 12−14
Battlefield 5 27−30
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 18−20
Cyberpunk 2077 14−16
Far Cry 5 21−24
Far Cry New Dawn 24−27
Forza Horizon 4 60−65
Hitman 3 16−18
Horizon Zero Dawn 50−55
Metro Exodus 27−30
Red Dead Redemption 2 24−27
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 30−33
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 24−27
Watch Dogs: Legion 60−65

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 21−24
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 12−14
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 18−20
Cyberpunk 2077 14−16
Far Cry 5 21−24
Forza Horizon 4 60−65
Hitman 3 16−18
Horizon Zero Dawn 50−55
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 30−33
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 24−27
Watch Dogs: Legion 60−65

Full HD
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 24−27

1440p
High Preset

Battlefield 5 18−20
Far Cry New Dawn 14−16

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 9−10
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 5−6
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 9−10
Cyberpunk 2077 4−5
Far Cry 5 10−12
Forza Horizon 4 35−40
Hitman 3 12−14
Horizon Zero Dawn 18−20
Metro Exodus 12−14
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 10−11
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 8−9
Watch Dogs: Legion 55−60

1440p
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 14−16

4K
High Preset

Battlefield 5 8−9
Far Cry New Dawn 6−7
Hitman 3 5−6
Horizon Zero Dawn 35−40
Metro Exodus 7−8
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 6−7

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey 5−6
Assassin's Creed Valhalla 4−5
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4−5
Cyberpunk 2077 1−2
Far Cry 5 5−6
Forza Horizon 4 10−12
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 5−6
Watch Dogs: Legion 3−4

4K
Epic Preset

Red Dead Redemption 2 9−10

Closest competitors

Radeon HD 7970M's performance relative to its closest rivals among notebook graphics cards.


NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 7970M is GeForce GTX 485M SLI, which is slower by 2% and lower by 6 positions in our ranking.

Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon HD 7970M:

GeForce MX450 104.86
Radeon HD 7970M 100

Similar GPUs

Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended processors

These processors are most commonly used with Radeon HD 7970M according to our statistics.

All comparisons with Radeon HD 7970M

Community ratings

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


4.2 43 votes

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Questions & comments

Here you can ask a question about Radeon HD 7970M, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.