NVIDIA GeForce GT 735M vs AMD Radeon 530

NVIDIA GeForce GT 735M

The NVIDIA GeForce GT 735M is a DirectX 11 graphics card of the middle class, which has been presented in spring 2013. It is based on the Kepler architecture and manufactured by TSMC in a 28-nanometer process. The GK208 chip (384 shaders) is clocked at up to 889 MHz plus boost and has a 64 bit memory interface (DDR3). Despite the nominally higher classification, the GT 735M is therefore slower than the 128-bit version of the GT 730M.

Architecture

The GK208 is a slightly revised version of the previously Kepler chip GK107. Although both have the same number of shader units (384 ALUs), the memory interface has been cut down from 128 to 64 bits.

The GK208 supports PCIe 3.0 as well as GPU Boost 2.0. This feature can automatically overclock the card if the laptop cooling system allows it. GPU Boost 2.0 is available on any notebook with a graphics card of the 700M series.

Performance

Depending on the clock rate, the performance of the GT 735M is somewhere between the GT 640M LE and the GT 640M. In particular, the narrow memory interface limits the performance significantly. Current games (as of 2013) can thus be played fluently only in low or medium settings. In older titles, there are also reserves for higher quality levels.

Features

The feature set 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) (also integrated in the GK107 core) 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 GT 735M should be similar to the old GT 640M LE (about 20 W), as Nvidia describes the card as a "low power" model. As a result, the GPU is best suited for notebooks 13-14 inches in size or greater.

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.