NVIDIA GeForce MX130 vs AMD Radeon 530 vs AMD Radeon 520

NVIDIA GeForce MX130

The Nvidia GeForce MX130 is a mid-range laptop graphics card with DirectX 12 support (FL 11_0) based on the older Maxwell architecture. It is a renamed GeForce 940MX and was announced in late 2017. It can be equipped with fast GDDR5 or slower DDR3 graphics memory.

The performance should be identical to the corresponding 940MX version (see our extensive benchmarks) and therefore positioned below the GeForce MX150. Demanding games like Ark Survival Evolved or PUBG may not run fluently even in the lowest detail settings. Less demanding games like Fifa 18 (with a powerful CPU) or Overwatch are also playable in medium settings.

The TDP of the card should be rated at about 15 to 30 Watt (depending on the version, clock speeds and memory). Therefore, the GPU is best suited for laptops from 13-inch and up.

AMD Radeon 530

The Radeon 530 is a dedicated entry-level graphics card for laptops that was released in 2017. According to AMD, there are several different versions with 384 or 320 shader units and DDR3 or GDDR5 64-bit graphics memory. However, they are not based on one of the newer RX series Polaris chips, but most likely using the same architecture as the Radeon R7 M445 / M440 / M340 / M260 / 8650M / 8590M (384 shader units, 28 nm GCN) and M430 / M330 / M230 (320 shader units, 28 nm Sun GCN). AMD claims that the clock speed of the Radeon 530 can reach 1,024 MHz.

Considering the above, the game performance of the Radeon 530 should fall between the Radeon R7 M440 (320 shader units, DDR3), Radeon R7 M460 (384 shader units, DDR3) and Radeon R7 M445 (320 shader units, GDDR5) (see these pages for detailed gaming benchmarks). Graphically intensive games such as Dishonored 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare or XCOM 2 should not run smoothly on this GPU. Less demanding games like Overwatch, Fifa 17 (with a fast CPU), or Farming Simulator 17, would run well, but using low to medium detail settings. For detailed game benchmarks, visit the pages of the previously linked cards. According to the specs, the DDR3 version could be slower than the Radeon 520, that is specified with 320 shaders and GDDR5.

AMD Radeon 520

The Radeon 520 is a dedicated entry-level graphics card for laptops that was released in 2017. AMD reveals that the chip features five compute units based on the GCN architecture and 2 GB GDDR5 64-bit graphics memory. The new chip is not based on the Polaris architecture from 2016, but the old one that was introduced with the Radeon R5 M230 in 2014 and later used in the M330 and M430 / M440 / M445.

Due to the higher clock speed of up to 1030 MHz, the Radeon 520 should be slightly faster than the old Radeon R7 M445 (920 MHz, 320 shader units, GDDR5). However, the performance should be comparable, which means that demanding games like Dishonored 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare or XCOM 2 should not run smoothly. Less demanding games like Overwatch, Fifa 17 (with a fast CPU) or Farming Simulator 17, would run well, but using low to medium detail settings. For detailed game benchmarks, visit the pages of the previous linked card. If only DDR3 is used, the performance should be on par with the Radeon R7 M440 (1021 MHz, 320 shader units, DDR3).