NVIDIA GeForce 920M vs AMD Radeon 740M vs AMD Radeon 780M

NVIDIA GeForce 920M

The NVIDIA GeForce 920M (sometimes also NVIDIA GeForce GT 920M) is an entry level DirectX 12 graphics card. It is based on the 28 nm Kepler architecture and uses the same GK208 chip as the GeForce GT 730M, 825M and 740M. The 384 shaders are clocked at 954 MHz, while the memory (64-bit DDR3 interface) runs at 900 MHz (1800 MHz effective).

Architecture

GK208 is based on the Kepler architecture and offers two shader blocks, called SMX, each with 192 shaders for a total of 384 shader cores. The shaders are clocked at the same speed as the rest of the chip. Furthermore, the GK208 chip has 16 TMUs and 8 ROPs on a 64-bit memory interface.

PCIe 3.0 is now supported by the mobile Kepler series and GPU Boost 2.0 mode can automatically overclock the card if the laptop cooling system allows it. This feature is available on any notebook with a graphics card from the 800M series.

Performance

The GeForce 920M offers a performance similar to the AMD Radeon R7 M260 or R7 M360 and will handle modern games (as of 2014/2015) in low settings only. For comparison, a GeForce 930M is about 20 to 30 percent faster than the 920M.

Features

The feature set of the 920M corresponds to the GT 730M and 825M. This includes support for up to 4 active displays. Furthermore, high resolution monitors of up to 3840x2160 pixels can now be connected using DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a if available. HD-Audio codecs, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, can be transmitted via bitstream mode through the HDMI port. However, as most laptops will feature Optimus, the integrated GPU will likely have direct control over the display ports and may limit the feature set available by the Nvidia Kepler cards.

The 5th generation PureVideo HD video processor (VP5) offers hardware decoding of HD videos. Common codecs such as MPEG-1/2, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264 and VC1/WMV9 are fully supported up to 4K resolutions while VC1 and MPEG-4 are supported up to 1080p. Two streams can be decoded in parallel for features such as Picture-in-Picture. Another feature is the inclusion of a dedicated video encoding engine similar to Intel QuickSync that can be accessed via the NVENCI API.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the GeForce 920M is similar to the 825M and suited for 13-inch laptops and above.

AMD Radeon 740M

The AMD Radeon 740M is an integrated GPU in the Ryzen 7040 series for laptops (Phoenix, e.g. Ryzen 5 7540U). The iGPU is based on the new RDNA3 architecture and has only 4 of the 12 CUs (= 256 shaders) clocked at up to 2.5 GHz (depending on the CPU model). The 740M supports hardware raytracing, although the performance is too slow to use it in current games.

Due to the reduced core count and clock speed, the performance is clearly below the Radeon 760M and 780M.

Thanks to the modern 4nm process and clever power-saving features, the power consumption is comparatively low (according to AMD). The whole chip of the first two models can be configured between 15 - 30 Watt TDP.

AMD Radeon 780M

The AMD Radeon 780M is an integrated GPU in the Ryzen 7040 series for laptops (Phoenix, e.g. Ryzen 9 7940HS). The iGPU is based on the new RDNA3 architecture and has 12 CUs (= 768 shaders) clocked at up to 3 GHz (depending on the CPU model). As the predecessor Radeon 680M, the 780M supports hardware raytracing, although the performance is too slow to use it in current games.

Thanks to the new architecture and higher clock speeds, the Radeon 780M should be clearly faster then the old Radeon 680M. This means most demanding games should be playable in minimum graphics settings (like Cyberpunk 2077) and less demanding games like Fifa 23 can be played in higher settings and resolutions (1080p). In early 2023, the Radeon 780M is the fastest iGPU on the market.

Thanks to the modern 4nm process and clever power-saving features, the power consumption is comparatively low (according to AMD). The whole chip of the first two models can be configured between 15 - 54 Watt TDP.