AMD Radeon 760M vs NVIDIA GeForce 840M Comparison

The AMD Radeon 760M and NVIDIA GeForce 840M represent two very different answers to the same question: how do you deliver graphics capability without a large add-in card? One is a modern integrated GPU built on modern silicon, the other a decade-old discrete mobile part. The recorded data paints a lopsided picture, but the details reward a closer look.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests overlap in the database for both parts, and the AMD Radeon 760M wins both by enormous margins.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the 760M scores 20255 against 4880... no, against 5764 for the GeForce 840M, a delta of 251.4 percent. That is not a close contest; it is a rout. The gap widens further in Geekbench Vulkan, where the 760M posts 30336 versus 4880, a delta of 521.6 percent. In other words, in the Vulkan compute test the integrated AMD part delivers roughly six times the throughput of the older discrete NVIDIA chip.

What explains such a gap? The 760M's peak FP32 throughput is recorded at 5.323 TFLOPS, while the 840M manages 863.2 GFLOPS. That raw shader advantage, amplified by a far higher boost clock, translates almost directly into these compute scores. The head-to-head record stands at two wins for the 760M and zero for the 840M, and no benchmark in the database shows the NVIDIA part ahead.

Context from the wider database reinforces the story. The 760M sits at the 35th percentile versus all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 6019, while the 840M sits at the 31st percentile with an average of 5322. Curiously, both land in similar neighborhood territory: the 760M's nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 6400 (average score 6001, delta of 0.3 percent), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M (6000, 0.3 percent), the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server (5996, 0.4 percent), and the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 (6049, -0.5 percent). The 840M's rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce 930A (5317, 0.1 percent), the GeForce GTX 980M (5308, 0.3 percent), the AMD Radeon R7 M445 (5358, -0.7 percent), and the GeForce 940M (5284, 0.7 percent).

That similarity in average placement is worth questioning. The 760M has a much richer benchmark portfolio in the database, including a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 400, Passmark G3D result of 5310, Passmark GPU compute result of 2840, Passmark G2D result of 890, and Passmark DirectX scores of 65 (DX9), 52 (DX11), 25 (DX12), and 19 (DX10). The 840M's record contains only the two Geekbench entries. The averaging method may flatter the older part, because the two head-to-head tests, the only direct comparisons available, show gaps of hundreds of percent.

Architecture Differences

The technological distance between these two is vast. The Radeon 760M is built on TSMC's 4 nm process as part of the Phoenix chip, using AMD's RDNA 3.0 architecture. The GeForce 840M uses TSMC's 28 nm process with the Maxwell architecture, chip GM108S.

The transistor counts tell the story starkly: 25,390 million transistors on a 178 mm² die for the 760M, versus 1,020 million transistors on a 77 mm² die for the 840M. That works out to a density of 142.6M transistors per mm² for the AMD part against 13.2M per mm² for the NVIDIA part, more than a tenfold difference in packing efficiency.

Feature sets diverge too. The 760M includes 8 ray tracing cores, a capability the 840M simply lacks, and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2). The 840M supports DirectX 12 only at feature level 11_0, a materially lower tier of API support. Both report OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4 in the database.

Resource counts also favor the newer design: 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs for the 760M versus 384 shading units, 16 TMUs, and 8 ROPs for the 840M. Neither part lists tensor cores.

Where Each One Wins

On the recorded data, the AMD Radeon 760M wins everywhere the two can be directly compared. Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan both go to the 760M by margins of 251.4 and 521.6 percent respectively. Compute workloads, Vulkan-based tasks, and anything leaning on raw FP32 throughput heavily favor the integrated AMD solution given its 5.323 TFLOPS versus 863.2 GFLOPS peak.

The 840M holds two structural advantages visible in the data, though not benchmark wins. First, it has dedicated memory: 2 GB of DDR3 on a 64-bit bus with 16.02 GB/s of bandwidth, whereas the 760M shares system memory with bandwidth listed as system dependent. A discrete memory pool is not dependent on host memory configuration, which can matter in systems with slow RAM. Second, it is a discrete GPU on a PCIe 3.0 x8 interface, an add-in component rather than silicon fused into the processor, though both are listed with IGP slot width and no power connectors.

Does either advantage translate into a win anywhere in the database? The data shows no such test. Until a benchmark appears where the 840M leads, its case rests entirely on the dedicated-memory argument.

Specification Differences

• Architecture: RDNA 3.0 (760M) versus Maxwell (840M)
• Chip / Generation: Phoenix, Navi III IGP versus GM108S, GeForce 800M
• Process node: 4 nm versus 28 nm, both on TSMC
• Transistors / die size: 25,390 million on 178 mm² versus 1,020 million on 77 mm²
• Clocks: 800 MHz base and 2599 MHz boost for the 760M; 1029 MHz base and 1124 MHz boost for the 840M, with memory at 1001 MHz (2 Gbps effective)
• Memory: system shared (type, size, bus, bandwidth all system dependent) versus 2 GB DDR3, 64-bit, 16.02 GB/s
• Shading resources: 512 shaders / 32 TMUs / 16 ROPs versus 384 / 16 / 8
• Ray tracing: 8 RT cores versus none
• Theoretical rates: 41.58 GPixel/s and 83.17 GTexel/s versus 8.992 GPixel/s and 17.98 GTexel/s
• FP32 / FP16: 5.323 TFLOPS and 5.323 TFLOPS (1:1) versus 863.2 GFLOPS and no listed FP16
• TDP: 15 W versus 33 W
• Bus interface: PCIe 4.0 x8 versus PCIe 3.0 x8
• DirectX: 12 Ultimate (12_2) versus 12 (11_0)
• Release date: the database records the 760M's release on 2024-01-30 and the 840M's on 2014-03-11
• Status: Active versus End-of-life
• Predecessor / successor: Navi II IGP and none listed, versus GeForce 700M and GeForce 900M
• Display outputs: motherboard dependent versus portable device dependent

FAQ

Q: How large is the performance gap in shared benchmarks? A: The Radeon 760M leads by 251.4 percent in Geekbench OpenCL and 521.6 percent in Geekbench Vulkan.

Q: Does either GPU have ray tracing? A: The 760M has 8 ray tracing cores; the 840M has none.

Q: Which has lower power draw? A: The 760M is listed at 15 W TDP versus 33 W for the 840M, despite delivering far higher throughput.

Q: Do they use the same memory approach? A: No. The 760M shares system memory, while the 840M has dedicated 2 GB DDR3 on a 64-bit bus with 16.02 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Are these parts still in production? A: The database lists the 760M as Active and the 840M as End-of-life.

Q: How do they rank against all GPUs? A: The 760M sits at the 35th percentile with an average score of 6019; the 840M sits at the 31st percentile with 5322.

The Verdict

The data admits only one conclusion. In every direct comparison recorded, the AMD Radeon 760M dominates the NVIDIA GeForce 840M, by triple-digit and even quintuple-digit percentage margins, while drawing less than half the power at 15 W versus 33 W. It also brings 8 ray tracing cores, DirectX 12 Ultimate support, and a far denser 4 nm implementation.

The 840M's remaining arguments are structural rather than measurable: dedicated DDR3 memory independent of system RAM, and its status as a discrete PCIe 3.0 x8 device. For any workload reflected in the database, compute, Vulkan, or general graphics, the 760M is the clear choice. The 840M belongs to an End-of-life generation that the recorded numbers place firmly in the past.