AMD Radeon RX 7800M vs NVIDIA CMP 70HX Comparison

The data presents a stark contrast between two GPUs built for entirely different purposes. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX is a relic from the cryptocurrency mining era, stripped of display outputs and designed for raw compute in a mining rig. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M is a modern, high-performance mobile graphics solution. The head-to-head benchmark results show a decisive victory for the AMD part, but the underlying architectures and specifications reveal why these scores are so lopsided.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark results are not close. In the two shared tests, the AMD Radeon RX 7800M dominates the NVIDIA CMP 70HX, leaving no room for ambiguity. The most significant gap appears in the Geekbench OpenCL test. Here, the AMD RX 7800M scores 120,778, while the NVIDIA CMP 70HX manages only 25,135. This translates to a delta of -79.2% for the NVIDIA part, meaning the AMD GPU is roughly 4.8 times faster in this specific compute workload. This is not a marginal improvement; it is a generational leap in raw computational throughput.

The Vulkan API test, which often reflects gaming and real-time graphics performance more closely, shows a similar trend. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M scores 126,668, compared to the NVIDIA CMP 70HX's 35,817. The delta here is -71.7%, indicating that the AMD part is still over 3.5 times faster. This is a substantial victory for the AMD architecture, highlighting its superior efficiency and execution capabilities in modern graphics APIs.

The aggregate benchmark scores reinforce this narrative. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX has an average benchmark score of 30,476, while the AMD Radeon RX 7800M, despite having fewer individual test scores in its profile, still achieves an average of 27,883. However, this aggregate number is misleading for the AMD part, as its average is dragged down by several low scores in older DirectX 9, 10, and 11 tests (scores of 174, 99, and 176 respectively). In contrast, the NVIDIA CMP 70HX only has two high scores in its profile. The head-to-head results, which use identical tests, are the only fair comparison, and they show a clear and overwhelming win for the Radeon RX 7800M.

The percentile rankings show a closer contest than the raw scores suggest. The CMP 70HX sits in the 75th percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 7800M is in the 73rd percentile. This is a curious data point. Despite being dramatically faster in the head-to-head tests, the RX 7800M's overall percentile is slightly lower. This can be attributed to the fact that its benchmark profile includes many legacy DirectX tests where it performs poorly, whereas the CMP 70HX's limited benchmark set consists solely of modern compute and graphics tests where it performs adequately relative to other cards.

The Verdict

From the data, the choice is unambiguous for any performance-focused application. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M is the superior GPU. It wins both head-to-head benchmark tests by a massive margin, with deltas of -79.2% and -71.7% against the NVIDIA part. The data shows that the RX 7800M offers computational capabilities that are in a completely different tier from the CMP 70HX.

The NVIDIA CMP 70HX, however, is not without its place. Its benchmark scores place it in the company of the NVIDIA Tesla M60 (with a 0% delta), AMD Radeon RX 6700 (0.1% delta), and AMD Radeon RX 6800 (1.3% delta). This suggests that, within its own generation and for its specific purpose, it was a capable compute card. Its 75th percentile ranking indicates it outperforms a majority of GPUs in the database, even if it is eclipsed by the newer AMD mobile part.

The choice is dictated by context. For a system requiring a GPU for general-purpose compute or mining, the CMP 70HX might have been a reasonable option in its prime, but it is now end-of-life. For anything requiring modern graphics performance, gaming, or even contemporary compute tasks, the RX 7800M is the only logical choice based on the benchmark evidence. The RX 7800M is also an active product, while the CMP 70HX is end-of-life, making the AMD part the more viable option for future support and drivers.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon RX 7800M wins in every category measurable by the shared benchmarks. It dominates in OpenCL compute, suggesting a significant advantage in tasks like physics simulations, machine learning inference, and other general-purpose GPU workloads. Its victory in Vulkan is even more telling, as this API is a cornerstone of modern gaming and cross-platform graphics, indicating it would provide a far superior experience in games that utilize it.

The NVIDIA CMP 70HX's only potential "win" is in its specialization. It is a mining GPU, which means it is designed for a very specific, narrow set of algorithms. Its lack of display outputs (listed as "No outputs") is a clear indicator that it was never intended for gaming or interactive graphics. The data does not show any benchmark where it outperforms the RX 7800M, but its architecture is tailored for high-throughput, repetitive compute tasks that are common in cryptocurrency mining. In that niche, it may have been efficient, but the benchmark data available does not support a win for it in any general-purpose test.

The RX 7800M also wins on the basis of being a mobile part. Its specification as an "IGP" and "Portable Device Dependent" display output indicates it is designed for laptops and portable devices. This is a fundamental difference in use case. The CMP 70HX is a dual-slot, 267mm long desktop card requiring a 200W power supply, while the RX 7800M is a mobile chip with a 180W TDP and no power connectors, designed to be soldered onto a board.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7800M is dramatically faster, scoring 120,778 compared to the NVIDIA CMP 70HX's 25,135, a difference of -79.2% from the NVIDIA's perspective.

Q: How do the two cards compare in Vulkan performance?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7800M wins decisively with a score of 126,668, while the NVIDIA CMP 70HX scores 35,817, placing the AMD card 71.7% ahead.

Q: Are these GPUs suitable for gaming?

A: The data suggests the AMD Radeon RX 7800M is far more capable, given its massive lead in the Vulkan API test, which is common in modern games. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX has no display outputs, making it impossible to use for gaming without a separate graphics adapter.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference?

A: The NVIDIA CMP 70HX has 8 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 256-bit bus, offering 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M has 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has a higher pixel fill rate?

A: The AMD Radeon RX 7800M has a significantly higher pixel rate of 224.2 GPixel/s, compared to the NVIDIA CMP 70HX's 89.28 GPixel/s.

Q: What is the production status of each GPU?

A: The NVIDIA CMP 70HX is listed as end-of-life, while the AMD Radeon RX 7800M is an active product with a release date of September 10, 2024.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are built on fundamentally different architectures. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX uses the Ampere architecture, manufactured on an 8 nm process at Samsung. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M utilizes the RDNA 3.0 architecture, built on a more advanced 5 nm process at TSMC. This process advantage is a key factor in the performance disparity, allowing for greater transistor density.

The transistor counts reflect the architectural and process differences. The AMD chip contains 28,100 million transistors on a 346 mm² die, yielding a density of 81.2M / mm². The NVIDIA chip has 17,400 million transistors on a larger 392 mm² die, resulting in a lower density of 44.4M / mm². The AMD chip packs nearly twice the transistors per square millimeter, proof of the more modern 5 nm process node.

The compute pipelines are also organized differently. Both have 3840 shading units, but the AMD RX 7800M has 240 TMUs and 96 ROPs, while the NVIDIA CMP 70HX has 120 TMUs and 64 ROPs. This means the AMD card has double the texture mapping units and 50% more render output units. Furthermore, the AMD part has 60 ray tracing cores, double the 30 found on the NVIDIA chip. The NVIDIA card does feature 120 tensor cores, which the AMD card lacks, but this does not translate to a win in the available benchmarks. These differences explain the AMD's massive lead in texture rate (560.4 GTexel/s vs 167.4 GTexel/s) and pixel rate (224.2 GPixel/s vs 89.28 GPixel/s).

Specification Differences

The specifications highlight the different design goals. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX has a base clock of 1365 MHz and a boost clock of 1395 MHz, while the AMD RX 7800M has a lower base clock of 1295 MHz but a much higher boost clock of 2335 MHz and a game clock of 2145 MHz. This allows the AMD card to reach far higher peak performance.

Memory is another major differentiator. The NVIDIA card uses 8 GB of GDDR6X on a 256-bit bus, achieving 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The AMD card uses 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, resulting in 432.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The NVIDIA card has more bandwidth, but the AMD card has more capacity. The FP32 performance is starkly different, with the AMD card delivering 35.87 TFLOPS compared to the NVIDIA card's 10.71 TFLOPS.

The physical and power characteristics are also distinct. The NVIDIA CMP 70HX is a dual-slot card, 267 mm long, requiring a single 12-pin power connector and a 200 W suggested power supply. It has no display outputs and uses a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface. The AMD Radeon RX 7800M is an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) with no power connectors and a 180 W TDP. It uses a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface and its display outputs are dependent on the portable device it is integrated into. The NVIDIA card is end-of-life, while the AMD card is active.