AMD Radeon HD 8790M
The AMD Radeon HD 8790M (sometimes known as the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 8790) is a DirectX 11.1 graphics card for laptops. It is based on the Mars chip (28nm GCN architecture) with 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. The core is clocked at 850 MHz (900 MHz Boost) with GDDR5 VRAM at 1125 MHz (4500 MHz effective).
The performance of the Radeon HD 8790M is similar to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M or GT 750M and therefore in the upper mid-range category. Most games of 2013 can be played fluently in medium or high details and the WXGA resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.
The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 6 compute units). Compared to old TeraScale 2 chips, the GCN-based Mars architecture offers improved performance in this framework.
Features of the 8790M include video decoding via UVD3 for decoding MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly from the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are now compatible as well.
The 8700M series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the 8790M can directly support up to 2 connected monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.
Other features of the 8700M series include ZeroCore for reducing power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. PowerTune allows automatic overclocking and underclocking of the graphics card as long as the GPU is within its TDP limit. For example, the chip may be underclocked when running FurMark and OCCT, but will overclock in certain games like Lost Planet, Crysis or Resident Evil 5.
The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it now allows audio to output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.
The power consumption should be slightly higher than the previous 7690M chip when under load (2 Watt difference according to the desktop setup from Techreport). However, the 8790M can potentially draw less power when idle (if not disabled by Enduro). Overall, the 8790M is best suited for 15-inch notebooks or bigger.
Radeon HD 8700M Series
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| Codename | Mars XTX | |||||||||||||||
| Architecture | GCN | |||||||||||||||
| Pipelines | 384 - unified | |||||||||||||||
| Core Speed | 850 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Speed | 4500 MHz | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Bus Width | 128 Bit | |||||||||||||||
| Memory Type | GDDR5 | |||||||||||||||
| Max. Amount of Memory | 2048 MB | |||||||||||||||
| Shared Memory | no | |||||||||||||||
| API | DirectX 11.1, Shader 5.0 | |||||||||||||||
| Transistor Count | 900 Million | |||||||||||||||
| technology | 28 nm | |||||||||||||||
| Notebook Size | medium sized | |||||||||||||||
| Date of Announcement | 16.11.2012 | |||||||||||||||
| Link to Manufacturer Page | www.amd.com | |||||||||||||||
Benchmarks
3DM Vant. Perf. total +
specvp11 snx-01 +
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
Game Benchmarks
The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailed information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.
Company of Heroes 2
2013
GRID 2
2013
Metro: Last Light
2013
BioShock Infinite
2013
SimCity
2013
Tomb Raider
2013
Crysis 3
2013
Dead Space 3
2013
Far Cry 3
2012
Assassin´s Creed III
2012
