Radeon HD 8950M vs HD 8970M

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking449not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency6.89no data
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2011−2020)GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code nameNeptuneSaturn
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date14 May 2013 (11 years ago)14 May 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 cores1280768
Core clock speed850 MHz1075 MHz
Boost clock speed900 MHzno data
Number of transistors2,800 million2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)100 Watt100 Watt
Texture fill rate72.0051.60
Floating-point processing power2.304 TFLOPS1.651 TFLOPS
ROPs3216
TMUs8048

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 sizelargeno data
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x16

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 typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount4 GB2 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1200 MHz1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth153.6 GB/s88 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 ConnectorsNo outputsNo outputs

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_1)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.16.3
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL1.22.0
Vulkan1.2.1311.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Maximum RAM amount 4 GB 2 GB

HD 8970M has a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount.

We couldn't decide between Radeon HD 8970M and Radeon HD 8950M. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon HD 8970M
Radeon HD 8970M
AMD Radeon HD 8950M
Radeon HD 8950M

Comparisons with similar GPUs

We selected several comparisons of graphics cards with performance close to those reviewed, providing you with more options to consider.

Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


4.4 46 votes

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4.1 19 votes

Rate Radeon HD 8950M on a scale of 1 to 5:

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Questions & comments

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