Radeon HD 8950 OEM vs GeForce GTX 980M

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking	287	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Power efficiency	13.18	no data
Architecture	Maxwell 2.0 (2014−2019)	GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code name	GM204	Tahiti
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop
Release date	7 October 2014 (10 years ago)	8 January 2013 (11 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	1536	1792
Core clock speed	1038 MHz	850 MHz
Boost clock speed	1127 MHz	925 MHz
Number of transistors	5,200 million	4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	unknown	200 Watt
Texture fill rate	51.84	103.6
Floating-point processing power	1.659 TFLOPS	3.315 TFLOPS
ROPs	64	32
TMUs	96	112

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop size	large	no data
Bus support	PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	MXM-B (3.0)	PCIe 3.0 x16
Length	no data	267 mm
Width	no data	2-slot
Supplementary power connectors	None	2x 6-pin
SLI options	+	-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory type	GDDR5	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	8 GB	3 GB
Memory bus width	256 Bit	384 Bit
Memory clock speed	2500 MHz	1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth	160 GB/s	240.0 GB/s
Shared memory	-	-

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors	No outputs	1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
VGA аnalog display support	+	no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) support	+	no data
HDMI	+	+
G-SYNC support	+	-

Supported technologies

Supported technological solutions. This information will prove useful if you need some particular technology for your purposes.

GameStream	+	-
GeForce ShadowPlay	+	-
GPU Boost	2.0	no data
GameWorks	+	-
H.264, VC1, MPEG2 1080p video decoder	+	-
Optimus	+	-
BatteryBoost	+	-
Ansel	+	-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX	12 (12_1)	12 (11_1)
Shader Model	6.4	5.1
OpenGL	4.5	4.6
OpenCL	1.1	1.2
Vulkan	1.1.126	1.2.131
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	7 October 2014	8 January 2013
Maximum RAM amount	8 GB	3 GB

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