AMD Radeon Vega 8 Mobile vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti and AMD Radeon Vega 8 Mobile are separated by roughly a decade of design philosophy, yet the recorded benchmark data places them surprisingly close in the database rankings. Both sit in the lower-middle of the historical GPU field, with the GTX 650 Ti at the 42nd percentile against all GPUs and the Vega 8 Mobile at the 39th. The headline verdict is simple: the GTX 650 Ti wins every head-to-head measurement, but the Vega 8 Mobile achieves comparable scores while drawing a fraction of the power and occupying no add-in slot at all. What follows unpacks how a discrete Kepler card and an integrated Raven-M graphics solution end up as near-neighbors in the standings.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two common tests exist for this pairing, and the GeForce GTX 650 Ti takes both. In Geekbench OpenCL it scores 7,877 against 7,435 for the Vega 8 Mobile, a 5.9 percent advantage. That margin is close enough that both land in overlapping rival clusters: the GTX 650 Ti's average benchmark score of 8,053 sits within 0.3 percent of the GeForce GTX 880M, the GTX 650 Ti Boost, the Quadro P5000, and the GRID K2, while the Vega 8 Mobile's average of 7,203 puts it within 0.6 percent of the GeForce GTX 750, the GTX 560 SE, the Iris Pro Graphics P580, and even the GTX 970.

The Vulkan test is where the gap widens decisively. The GTX 650 Ti scores 8,229 against 6,970 for the Vega 8 Mobile, an 18.1 percent victory. Notably, this is the stronger of the two results for the NVIDIA card across the board, indicating that its Kepler-era driver path handles the Vulkan API test better than the OpenCL compute workload. For the Vega 8 Mobile the pattern reverses: its OpenCL score of 7,435 is its better result, and its Vulkan result is its weakest recorded number, dragging its average down.

The final tally is two wins for the GTX 650 Ti and zero for the Vega 8 Mobile. Still, the largest single-margin win is 18.1 percent, which is a real but not overwhelming gap between parts positioned three percentile points apart in the all-GPU rankings.

Where Each One Wins

Strictly by recorded measurements, the GTX 650 Ti wins everywhere a benchmark exists. It is 5.9 percent faster in OpenCL compute and 18.1 percent faster in Vulkan graphics workloads. Its raw fixed-function throughput backs this up: 14.85 GPixel/s of pixel fill versus 8.808 GPixel/s, 59.39 GTexel/s of texture fill versus 35.23 GTexel/s, and 1,425.4 GFLOPS of FP32 compute versus 1,127.4 GFLOPS. In every measured performance dimension, the discrete card leads.

The Vega 8 Mobile's case rests on attributes the benchmarks do not score. It wins on power: a 25 W thermal envelope versus a 110 W TDP, no power connectors versus a required 6-pin PCIe connector, and no suggested system PSU requirement beyond the platform itself. It wins on footprint: as an integrated solution with an IGP interface and portable-device-dependent display outputs, it consumes no slot. It also wins on feature-level API support, exposing DirectX 12 (12_1) feature level versus 12 (11_0) on the GTX 650 Ti, and Vulkan 1.3 versus Vulkan 1.2.175. And it delivers 2.255 TFLOPS of FP16 throughput at a 2:1 rate, a capability the Kepler card's recorded data does not include.

So the split is clean: for pure measured performance, the GTX 650 Ti; for efficiency per watt, integration, and modern API feature levels, the Vega 8 Mobile.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in benchmarks?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti. It wins both recorded head-to-head tests, leading by 5.9 percent in Geekbench OpenCL (7,877 vs 7,435) and by 18.1 percent in Geekbench Vulkan (8,229 vs 6,970).

Q: How close are these two in the overall database rankings?

A: Very close. The GTX 650 Ti sits at the 42nd percentile versus all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 8,053, while the Vega 8 Mobile sits at the 39th percentile with an average of 7,203.

Q: How much power does each one need?

A: The Vega 8 Mobile has a 25 W thermal design power and requires no power connectors. The GTX 650 Ti has a 110 W TDP, requires one 6-pin power connector, and carries a suggested 300 W system power supply.

Q: Which one supports newer graphics APIs?

A: The Vega 8 Mobile. It reports DirectX 12 (12_1) feature level and Vulkan 1.3, while the GTX 650 Ti reports DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. Both list OpenGL 4.6.

Q: Do these GPUs have ray tracing or AI acceleration hardware?

A: No. The database lists no RT cores and no tensor cores for either product.

Q: What memory does each GPU have?

A: The GTX 650 Ti has 1024 MB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus running at an effective 5.4 Gbps, delivering 86.40 GB/s of bandwidth. The Vega 8 Mobile shares system memory, so capacity, type, and bandwidth are all system dependent.

Specification Differences

The two parts differ on nearly every recorded field. The GTX 650 Ti is built on the GK106S chip, a 28 nm TSMC part with 2,540 million transistors on a 221 mm² die, for a density of 11.5M transistors per mm². The Vega 8 Mobile uses the Raven-M chip, a 14 nm GlobalFoundries part with 4,940 million transistors on a 210 mm² die, roughly double the density at 23.5M per mm².

Shader resources favor the discrete card: 768 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 16 ROPs versus 512 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. The Vega 8 Mobile records a base clock of 300 MHz and a boost clock of 1,101 MHz; the GTX 650 Ti has no recorded core clock figures, only its 1,350 MHz memory clock.

Form factors diverge completely. The GTX 650 Ti is a single-slot add-in card, 145 mm (5.7 inches) long, on a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, with two DVI outputs and one mini-HDMI 1.4a port. The Vega 8 Mobile is an integrated solution with no slot, no card dimensions, and portable-device-dependent display outputs. The GTX 650 Ti launched at 149 USD MSRP; no launch MSRP is recorded for the Vega 8 Mobile, which shipped as part of mobile platforms. The GTX 650 Ti was released on 2012-10-08, the Vega 8 Mobile on 2019-01-07. Both are now end-of-life products.

Architecture Differences

The GTX 650 Ti belongs to NVIDIA's Kepler architecture and the GeForce 600 generation, succeeded by the GeForce 700 line. Kepler relies purely on its shader array for compute, and the database records no FP16 capability for it, only 1,425.4 GFLOPS of FP32.

The Vega 8 Mobile is GCN 5.0, part of the Vega IGP family built on the Raven Ridge-M design, preceded by GCN 3.0 IGP silicon and succeeded by Navi II IGP. Beyond the process node advantage (14 nm GlobalFoundries versus 28 nm TSMC), GCN 5.0 brings native half-precision throughput at 2.255 TFLOPS with a 2:1 ratio to FP32, double the FP32 figure of 1,127.4 GFLOPS. Neither architecture includes dedicated ray tracing or tensor hardware.

The memory philosophies differ most. Kepler pairs a dedicated 128-bit GDDR5 subsystem with 86.40 GB/s of guaranteed bandwidth. The Vega design shares the host system's memory, which means its effective bandwidth is dictated by the laptop platform rather than fixed in silicon. This is the classic trade between a self-contained discrete card and an integrated solution that must borrow from the CPU's memory pool.

The Verdict

Measured performance favors the GeForce GTX 650 Ti without exception: two benchmark wins, a 5.9 percent OpenCL lead, an 18.1 percent Vulkan lead, and superior fill rates and FP32 compute across the board. Anyone choosing strictly on recorded scores should pick the GTX 650 Ti, which also holds a three-point percentile edge (42 versus 39) and competes in a rival cluster containing the GTX 880M, the GTX 650 Ti Boost, the Quadro P5000, and the GRID K2.

The Vega 8 Mobile argues for itself on grounds the benchmark table does not capture: a 25 W envelope against 110 W, no 6-pin connector and no 300 W PSU requirement, zero slot occupancy, DirectX 12 (12_1) feature level, Vulkan 1.3, and 2.255 TFLOPS of FP16 throughput. It trades a modest performance deficit for dramatic efficiency and integration, and its own rival cluster, containing the GTX 750, the GTX 560 SE, the Iris Pro P580, and the GTX 970, shows it performing near parts that consumed far more power as discrete cards.

The data-driven summary: the GTX 650 Ti for the fastest recorded results, the Vega 8 Mobile for efficiency, modern API support, and the roughly comparable performance it achieves from a fraction of the power budget. Both are end-of-life parts, so these conclusions apply to secondary-market or legacy-system contexts only.