NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 vs AMD Radeon HD 8790M

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4 GB vs AMD Radeon HD 8790M 2 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2494 points

5321% significantly better overall score

46 points

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

52 FPS

50 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

2 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

41 FPS

40 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

0 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

36 FPS

35 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

1 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

33 FPS

33 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

0 FPS

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Other Benchmarks

Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

33463 points

376% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (OpenCL) score

7019 points

Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

41306 points

443% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (Vulkan) score

7602 points

Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

OpenCL compute benchmark

34611 points

630% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (OpenCL) score

4741 points

Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

Vulkan compute benchmark

38178 points

453% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (Vulkan) score

6895 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1126 MHz

32% slightly higher core clock speed

850 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1216 MHz

43% significantly higher boost clock speed

850 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

100% significantly more memory

2 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

100% significantly larger memory bus width

128 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

250% significantly higher memory bandwidth

64 GB/s

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

77.82 Gigapixels/s

980% significantly higher pixel rate

7.2 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

155.6 Gigatexels/s

620% significantly higher texture rate

21.6 Gigatexels/s

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048

433% significantly more shading units

384

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

433% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

700% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

177th of 586

546th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon HD 8000M Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

11.1

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

4.4

GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon HD 8790M comparison

In our benchmarks, the GeForce GTX 980 beats the Radeon HD 8790M in gaming performance.

The GeForce GTX 980 has a slightly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. In addition, the GeForce GTX 980 also has a significantly higher boost clock speed. The boost clock speed is the frequency that the GPU core can reach if the temperature is low enough. The allows for higher performance in certain scenarios.

As stated by the manufacturer, the GeForce GTX 980 has significantly more memory with 4 GiB of memory compared to 2 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 980 over the Radeon HD 8790M.