AMD Radeon HD 7790 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile and the AMD Radeon HD 7790 represent two distinct eras of GPU design, separated by nearly eight years of architectural evolution. The data shows the RTX 3060 Mobile holds a decisive performance advantage, with an average benchmark score of 18159 compared to the HD 7790’s 17666. While the delta appears modest at first glance—a 2.8% difference—the context of their respective benchmark suites and architectural capabilities reveals a far wider gulf in practical capabilities. The RTX 3060 Mobile sits in the 62nd percentile of all GPUs, while the HD 7790 occupies the 61st, but this similarity in percentile ranking masks the fact that the RTX 3060 Mobile is a modern laptop part with features the older desktop card simply cannot offer.

The Verdict

The benchmark data points to a clear separation in purpose and capability. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile is the choice for any user requiring modern feature support, particularly hardware-accelerated ray tracing and tensor-based processing. Its 30 RT cores and 120 tensor cores are absent from the AMD Radeon HD 7790 entirely, making the RTX 3060 Mobile the only viable option for workloads that leverage DirectX 12 Ultimate features or AI-accelerated tasks. Its 6 GB of GDDR6 memory and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth provide a substantial memory subsystem that dwarfs the HD 7790’s 1024 MB of GDDR5 at 96.00 GB/s.

Conversely, the AMD Radeon HD 7790 remains relevant only in legacy scenarios. Its 1.792 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is a fraction of the RTX 3060 Mobile’s 10.94 TFLOPS, and its 16.00 GPixel/s pixel rate is comparably low. The data shows its average benchmark score comes from a single Geekbench Metal test, while the RTX 3060 Mobile’s score aggregates ten diverse benchmarks, including modern DirectX 12 and compute workloads. For a user building a period-correct system or requiring legacy PCIe 3.0 compatibility, the HD 7790’s launch MSRP of 149 USD represents its historical position, but the performance data offers no reason to select it for contemporary tasks. The RTX 3060 Mobile is the superior part in every measurable aspect except power draw, where it is slightly more efficient at 80 W versus 85 W.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is generational. The RTX 3060 Mobile uses the GA106 chip fabricated on Samsung’s 8 nm process, packing 12,000 million transistors into a 276 mm² die. This yields a transistor density of 43.5 million transistors per square millimeter. In contrast, the HD 7790 uses the Bonaire chip on TSMC’s 28 nm process, with 2,080 million transistors on a 160 mm² die, resulting in a density of just 13.0 million per square millimeter. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s Ampere architecture supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the HD 7790’s GCN 2.0 architecture is limited to DirectX 12 (12_0).

The RTX 3060 Mobile includes dedicated ray tracing and tensor cores—30 and 120 respectively—which are entirely absent from the HD 7790. This is not a minor feature difference; it fundamentally changes the types of workloads each GPU can accelerate. The RTX 3060 Mobile also supports Vulkan 1.4, whereas the HD 7790 is limited to Vulkan 1.2.170. Both support OpenGL 4.6, but the feature sets diverge sharply beyond that. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s memory runs at 1750 MHz with 14 Gbps effective speed, while the HD 7790’s memory operates at 1500 MHz with 6 Gbps effective speed. The RTX 3060 Mobile also utilizes a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface, doubling the bandwidth potential of the HD 7790’s PCIe 3.0 x16 connection.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Direct head-to-head benchmark comparisons are unavailable in the data—the headToHeadBenchmarks array is empty, and winsA and winsB are both zero. However, the individual benchmark suites provide meaningful comparison points. The RTX 3060 Mobile demonstrates its strength in modern workloads, scoring 1821 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, 79483 in Geekbench OpenCL, and 80344 in Geekbench Vulkan. These scores indicate robust performance in contemporary APIs and compute tasks. The HD 7790 has only one recorded benchmark—Geekbench Metal at 17666—which is a macOS-oriented test that the RTX 3060 Mobile does not report.

The RTX 3060 Mobile’s PassMark scores paint a mixed picture across legacy APIs: 90 in DirectX 10, 110 in DirectX 11, 58 in DirectX 12, and 146 in DirectX 9. Its PassMark G3D score of 13230 and GPU compute score of 5718 show substantial compute capability. The HD 7790 lacks these specific benchmarks entirely, making direct numerical comparison impossible. What the data does show is that the RTX 3060 Mobile’s average score of 18159 is derived from a broader and more demanding test suite, while the HD 7790’s 17666 comes from a single test. This suggests the RTX 3060 Mobile would outperform the HD 7790 by a wider margin in direct comparison, given that the HD 7790’s single score is already lower.

The nearest rivals data reinforces the RTX 3060 Mobile’s positioning. It sits within 1.2% of the AMD Radeon RX 460 and Intel Arc A770M, and within 0.4% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER. These are all modern or recent GPUs. The HD 7790, by contrast, is within 0.7% of the AMD Radeon Pro 560 and within 0.4% of the AMD Radeon 780M, both integrated or mobile-class parts. This places the HD 7790 in a completely different performance tier despite the similar percentile ranking.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every specification field. The RTX 3060 Mobile has 3840 shading units, 120 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, compared to the HD 7790’s 896 shading units, 56 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s pixel rate is 68.40 GPixel/s versus 16.00 GPixel/s, and its texture rate is 171.0 GTexel/s versus 56.00 GTexel/s. FP32 compute is 10.94 TFLOPS versus 1.792 TFLOPS. The RTX 3060 Mobile supports FP16 at a 1:1 ratio, while the HD 7790 has no reported FP16 capability.

Memory configurations are equally divergent. The RTX 3060 Mobile features 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, while the HD 7790 has 1024 MB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s memory bandwidth is 336.0 GB/s, over three times the HD 7790’s 96.00 GB/s. The RTX 3060 Mobile has no power connectors, being a mobile part, while the HD 7790 requires a single 6-pin connector and a 250 W suggested PSU. The HD 7790 is a dual-slot card measuring 183 mm (7.2 inches), while the RTX 3060 Mobile’s dimensions are portable-device dependent. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s display outputs are also portable-device dependent, whereas the HD 7790 offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, and 2x mini-DisplayPort 1.2.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has more compute power?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile delivers 10.94 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, compared to the AMD Radeon HD 7790’s 1.792 TFLOPS. This represents a roughly six-fold advantage in raw compute throughput.

Q: Do both GPUs support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The RTX 3060 Mobile includes 30 dedicated RT cores for hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The HD 7790 has no RT cores and therefore lacks this capability entirely.

Q: What are the memory capacities and types?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile has 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, while the HD 7790 has 1024 MB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus. The RTX 3060 Mobile’s bandwidth is 336.0 GB/s versus 96.00 GB/s for the HD 7790.

Q: How do their benchmark averages compare?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile has an average benchmark score of 18159 across ten tests, while the HD 7790 has an average score of 17666 from a single Geekbench Metal test. The RTX 3060 Mobile ranks in the 62nd percentile of all GPUs, and the HD 7790 ranks in the 61st.

Q: Which GPU is more power-efficient?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile has a TDP of 80 W, while the HD 7790 has a TDP of 85 W. Despite consuming 5 W less power, the RTX 3060 Mobile delivers significantly higher performance.

Q: What are the release dates and process nodes?

A: The RTX 3060 Mobile was released on January 11, 2021, and is built on Samsung’s 8 nm process. The HD 7790 was released on March 21, 2013, and uses TSMC’s 28 nm process. Both are end-of-life products.