AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two shared benchmark tests between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M and the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT: Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan. The AMD part wins both decisively, and the margin is the headline story.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT scores 74,869 against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M's 14,509. That is a delta of 80.6% in favor of the AMD card. To put it plainly, the RX 7600M XT delivers more than five times the OpenCL compute score of the older GTX 965M. This is not a close contest; the gap reflects a generational leap in raw shader throughput and memory bandwidth.

The Geekbench Vulkan test narrows the gap somewhat, but the outcome remains one-sided. The RX 7600M XT scores 27,793, while the GTX 965M scores 14,299. The delta here is 48.6% in favor of AMD. Vulkan is a lower-level API, and the GTX 965M's Maxwell architecture handles it with reasonable efficiency, but the RX 7600M XT's RDNA 3.0 design and much higher clock speeds still produce a commanding lead.

The head-to-head win tally stands at 2 wins for the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT and 0 for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M. There are no benchmark categories where the older NVIDIA chip comes out ahead. The average benchmark score in the database reflects this: the GTX 965M averages 14,404 across its two recorded tests, while the RX 7600M XT averages 12,710 across a much larger set of ten tests. That average is pulled down by the RX 7600M XT's low DirectX scores, but the head-to-head comparisons are unambiguous.

It is notably the RX 7600M XT's average score places it in the 52nd percentile of all GPUs, while the GTX 965M sits at the 56th percentile. This apparent contradiction stems from the different test suites: the GTX 965M's two tests are both synthetic compute workloads where it performs relatively well for its era, whereas the RX 7600M XT's broader test set includes older DirectX 9, 10, and 11 benchmarks where its modern architecture does not always shine. The head-to-head data, however, is the more reliable comparison for these two specific parts.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the Geekbench OpenCL test?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT wins with a score of 74,869 versus the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M's 14,509, a delta of 80.6% in AMD's favor.

Q: How large is the Vulkan performance gap between these two?

A: The RX 7600M XT scores 27,793 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the GTX 965M scores 14,299. The AMD card leads by 48.6%.

Q: Does the GTX 965M win any head-to-head benchmark?

A: No. The recorded head-to-head results show 0 wins for the GTX 965M and 2 wins for the RX 7600M XT across the two shared tests.

Q: What is the average benchmark score for each GPU?

A: The GTX 965M has an average benchmark score of 14,404 across its two tests. The RX 7600M XT averages 12,710 across ten tests, which includes several low-scoring DirectX 9, 10, and 11 runs.

Q: How do their percentiles compare?

A: The GTX 965M is in the 56th percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 7600M XT is in the 52nd percentile. This reflects the different benchmark suites each card was tested under.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference?

A: The GTX 965M has 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus with 80.19 GB/s bandwidth. The RX 7600M XT has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Architecture Differences

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M is built on the GM204 chip using the Maxwell 2.0 architecture, fabricated on a 28 nm process at TSMC. It packs 5,200 million transistors into a die size of 398 mm², giving a transistor density of 13.1 million per mm². This is a mature, power-efficient design from the GeForce 900M generation, released in early 2015. Its compute configuration includes 1,024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units. The GTX 965M does not have dedicated ray tracing cores or tensor cores, as those features did not exist in Maxwell.

The AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT is a far more modern part. It uses the Navi 33 chip with the RDNA 3.0 architecture, fabricated on a 6 nm process at TSMC. The transistor count is 13,300 million, but the die size is only 204 mm², producing a density of 65.2 million transistors per mm². That is roughly five times the density of the Maxwell chip, which explains how AMD packs far more compute into a smaller physical area. The RX 7600M XT has 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 32 ray tracing cores. It also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), whereas the GTX 965M is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1). Both cards support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4.

The clock behavior differs sharply. The GTX 965M has a base clock of 924 MHz and a boost of 950 MHz. The RX 7600M XT runs at a base of 1280 MHz, a game clock of 2023 MHz, and a boost of 2469 MHz. The AMD card's boost clock is more than 2.5 times the NVIDIA card's boost clock, which compounds the advantage from its larger shader count. The RX 7600M XT also has a much higher pixel rate (158.0 GPixel/s versus 30.40 GPixel/s) and texture rate (316.0 GTexel/s versus 60.80 GTexel/s). Its FP32 throughput is 20.23 TFLOPS, compared to 1.946 TFLOPS for the GTX 965M. The AMD card also offers FP16 performance at 40.45 TFLOPS (2:1 rate), which the GTX 965M does not record.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ in nearly every measurable specification. The process node moves from 28 nm on the GTX 965M to 6 nm on the RX 7600M XT. Transistor count jumps from 5,200 million to 13,300 million, while die size shrinks from 398 mm² to 204 mm². Memory capacity goes from 2 GB GDDR5 to 8 GB GDDR6, with bandwidth rising from 80.19 GB/s to 288.0 GB/s; both use a 128-bit bus.

Compute resources scale up substantially: shading units go from 1,024 to 2,048, TMUs from 64 to 128, and ROPs from 32 to 64. The RX 7600M XT adds 32 ray tracing cores, which the GTX 965M lacks entirely. Clock speeds rise from a 924 MHz base and 950 MHz boost to a 1280 MHz base, 2023 MHz game clock, and 2469 MHz boost. The memory clock moves from 1253 MHz (5 Gbps effective) to 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective).

Pixel rate jumps from 30.40 GPixel/s to 158.0 GPixel/s, and texture rate from 60.80 GTexel/s to 316.0 GTexel/s. FP32 throughput rises from 1.946 TFLOPS to 20.23 TFLOPS. The RX 7600M XT also records an FP16 rate of 40.45 TFLOPS, a feature the GTX 965M does not list. The TDP is recorded as 120 W for the AMD card, while the GTX 965M has no TDP figure in the database. The GTX 965M uses an MXM Module slot with an MXM-B (3.0) interface, while the RX 7600M XT is listed as an IGP with a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. The GTX 965M is end-of-life, released on 2015-01-08; the RX 7600M XT is active, released on 2023-01-03.

The Verdict

The data is clear: the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT is the superior GPU in every head-to-head benchmark recorded. It wins Geekbench OpenCL by 80.6% and Geekbench Vulkan by 48.6%. Its architecture is newer, its memory subsystem is substantially faster, and its compute resources are roughly double those of the GTX 965M. The RX 7600M XT also supports DirectX 12 Ultimate and ray tracing, which the GTX 965M cannot offer.

The GTX 965M's only statistical advantages are its higher percentile ranking (56th versus 52nd) and its higher average benchmark score (14,404 versus 12,710). However, those figures are artifacts of different test suites. The GTX 965M has only two recorded benchmarks, both synthetic compute tests, while the RX 7600M XT has ten tests that include older DirectX versions where modern architectures often score poorly. When the two GPUs are compared directly on the same tests, the RX 7600M XT wins outright.

For a user deciding between these two mobile GPUs, the choice is straightforward based on performance: the RX 7600M XT delivers dramatically higher compute scores and has four times the memory capacity. The GTX 965M is an end-of-life product from 2015, while the RX 7600M XT is an active product from 2023. The RX 7600M XT is the only reasonable pick for modern workloads that leverage DirectX 12 Ultimate, ray tracing, or high-bandwidth memory.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT wins in every category where the two are directly compared. In Geekbench OpenCL, its lead is massive at 80.6%, indicating a strong advantage in compute-heavy tasks such as GPGPU workloads, physics simulation, and machine learning inference. In Geekbench Vulkan, its lead is 48.6%, which suggests it also handles modern gaming APIs with much greater headroom. The RX 7600M XT's 8 GB of GDDR6 memory at 288.0 GB/s bandwidth makes it suitable for high-resolution textures and large data sets, whereas the GTX 965M's 2 GB GDDR5 at 80.19 GB/s would bottleneck in those scenarios.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M has no head-to-head wins to claim. Its only statistical bright spots are the percentile ranking and average score, both of which come from a limited and different test set. In the two shared tests, the GTX 965M is behind by margins that no driver or game optimization could realistically close. For legacy DirectX 9, 10, and 11 workloads, the RX 7600M XT's recorded scores are mixed (its DirectX 11 score of 137 is modest), but those tests were not part of the head-to-head comparison, and the GTX 965M has no corresponding data in the database.

The practical conclusion is that the RX 7600M XT is the pick for any application that uses OpenCL, Vulkan, or modern DirectX. The GTX 965M, given its end-of-life status and limited memory, is best suited only for very old software or as a collector's item. The recorded data does not support any scenario where the GTX 965M outperforms the RX 7600M XT.