NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M vs AMD Radeon 680M

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 is a high end desktop graphics card based on the Maxwell architecture. As the faster GTX 980, the GTX 970 uses the GM204 chip, but with reduced shaders (2048 vs. 1664) and TMUs (128 vs 103). The graphics card is equipped with 4 GB GDDR5 (7 GHz effective). 3.5 GB of the 4 GB are connected with 224 Bit, the rest only with a 32 Bit interface. This can lead to some stuttering or reduced frame rates in games that use the full 4 GB. The similar named mobile GeForce GTX 970M is clearly slower as it features only 1280 shader cores.

Despite the unique memory configuration, the GTX 970 performs on average on par with the older GeForce GTX 780 Ti or a AMD Radeon R9 290X.

The GM204 supports CUDA, 3D Vision, PhysX, GeForce Experience, Surround, GameStream, GPU Boost 2.0, Adaptive Vertical Sync / G-SYNC, SLI, DSR, MFAA and Virtual Reality latency improvements.

The Maxwell architecture is very power efficient. While gaming, the card only uses as much power as the Radeon R9 285 which is more than 35% slower on average.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M is a high end DirectX 11.2 graphics card for laptops. The card is not yet officially announced and therefore the following information is based on rumors and leaks. The card based on the GM204 Maxwell chip, that is already available in the desktop GeForce GTX 970 and 980. Thanks to the improved efficiency, the GTX970M should be clearly faster than the previous GTX 870M and even the old GTX 880M.

AMD Radeon 680M

The AMD Radeon 680M is an integrated GPU in the Ryzen 6000 series for laptops (Rembrandt, e.g. Ryzen 9 6980HX). The iGPU is based on the RDNA2 architecture and has 12 CUs (= 768 shaders) clocked at up to 2,400 MHz (depending on the CPU model). The 680M and 660M iGPUs are the first integrated graphics card with hardware raytracing support, although the performance is too slow to use it in current games.

Thanks to the new architecture, high core count and the increased maximum core clock, the Radeon 680M should be clearly faster then the old Radeon Vega 8 iGPUs. Therefore, the 680M should be the fastest integrated graphics card in early 2022. Compared to the dedicated Radeon 5300M (also RDNA), the 680M should still be significantly slower. According to AMD, the Radeon 680M (in the 6800U) is faster than a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX450 and best suited for 1080p gaming and low details (for AAA games).

Thanks to the modern 6nm process and clever power-saving features, the power consumption is comparatively low (according to AMD), so the graphics card can also be used for slim and light notebooks (depending on the CPU model). The whole Ryzen 6000 chip can be configured down to 15W.