Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon HD 8730M

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 8730M, 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 Radeon HD 7870 stacks up against Radeon HD 8730M, check out specs charts below.

Radeon HD 8730M is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon HD 8730M is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon HD 8730M here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 Radeon HD 8730M
Power consumption (TDP) 175 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x8
Memory type GDDR5 DDR3
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 2 GB
Display Connectors No outputs
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  • Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 8730M have maximum RAM of 2 GB.
  • Radeon HD 7870 is used in Desktops, and Radeon HD 8730M - in Laptops.
  • Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 8730M are build with GCN architecture.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon HD 7870 is 350 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 8730M.
  • Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 8730M are manufactured by 28 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 7870 is 2800 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 8730M.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 24−27 0−1
ultra / 1080p 14−16
QHD / 1440p 9−10 0−1
4K / 2160p 6−7
low / 720p 45−50 1−2
medium / 1080p 30−33 0−1
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7870 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 4600% more, than Radeon HD 8730M.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 Radeon HD 8730M
Architecture GCN GCN
Code name Pitcairn XT Mars
Type Desktop Laptop
Release date 5 March 2012 16 November 2012
Pipelines 1280 384
Core clock speed 1000 MHz 650 MHz
Boost Clock 700 MHz
Transistor count 2800 Million 950 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 16.80
Floating-point performance 537.6 gflops
Memory bus width 256 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 4800 MHz 2000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 32 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX DirectX 11.1, Shader 5.1 12 (11_1)
Shader Model 5.1
OpenGL 4.6
OpenCL 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) 0.39 kh/s
Laptop size medium sized
Eyefinity +
Decred / DCR (Decred) 0.63 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 16.6 Mh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) 145 Sol/s
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