GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon HD 7850

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between GeForce GTX 480 and Radeon HD 7850, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the GeForce GTX 480 stacks up against Radeon HD 7850, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  GeForce GTX 480 Radeon HD 7850
Power consumption (TDP) 250 Watt 225 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 6-pin & 8-pin 1x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 1536 MB 2 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x mini-HDMI 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • GeForce GTX 480 has 11% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 7850.
  • GeForce GTX 480 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon HD 7850 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • GeForce GTX 480 has 1534 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 7850.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • GeForce GTX 480 is build with Fermi architecture, and Radeon HD 7850 - with GCN 1.0.
  • GeForce GTX 480 is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 7850 - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Radeon HD 7850 is 200 mm longer, than GeForce GTX 480.
  • Memory clock speed of GeForce GTX 480 is 648 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 7850.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 21−24 18−20
ultra / 1080p 12−14 10−12
QHD / 1440p 6−7 5−6
4K / 2160p 5−6 4−5
low / 720p 40−45 35−40
medium / 1080p 24−27 24−27
The average gaming FPS of GeForce GTX 480 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 11% more, than Radeon HD 7850.

Full Specs

  GeForce GTX 480 Radeon HD 7850
Architecture Fermi GCN 1.0
Code name GF100 Pitcairn
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 7 December 2010 5 March 2012
Pipelines 480 1024
Core clock speed 700 MHz
Boost Clock 1000 MHz
Transistor count 3,100 million 2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 42 billion/sec 55.04
Floating-point performance 1,345.0 gflops 1,761 gflops
Length 10.5" (267 mm) (26.7 cm) 210 mm
Memory bus width 384 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 1848 MHz (3696 data rate) 1200 MHz
Memory bandwidth 177.4 GB/s 153.6 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 12 (11_0)
Shader Model 5.1 5.1
OpenGL 4.2 4.6
OpenCL 1.1 1.2
Vulkan N/A
CUDA +
FreeSync +
CUDA cores 480
Bus support 16x PCI-E 2.0 PCIe 2.1 x16
Height 4.376" (111 mm) (11.1 cm)
SLI options +
Multi monitor support +
HDMI + +
HDCP +
Maximum VGA resolution 2048x1536
Audio input for HDMI Internal
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 117 Mh/s 249 Mh/s
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CrossFire +
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 12.5 Mh/s
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