Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition vs FirePro M5950

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking727not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency6.77no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)TeraScale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code nameWhistlerBlackcomb
Market segmentMobile workstationLaptop
Release date4 January 2011 (13 years ago)25 August 2011 (13 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 cores480960
Core clock speed725 MHz680 MHz
Number of transistors716 million1,700 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm40 nm
Power consumption (TDP)35 Watt75 Watt
Texture fill rate17.4032.64
Floating-point processing power0.696 TFLOPS1.306 TFLOPS
ROPs832
TMUs2448

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 sizemedium sizedno data
Bus supportn/ano data
InterfaceMXM-A (3.0)MXM-B (3.0)
Form factorMXM-Ano data
Supplementary power connectorsno dataNone

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 amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width128 Bit256 Bit
Memory clock speed900 MHz900 MHz
Memory bandwidth57 GB/s115.2 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.

DirectX11.2 (11_0)11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model5.05.0
OpenGL4.44.4
OpenCL1.21.2
VulkanN/AN/A

Pros & cons summary


Recency 4 January 2011 25 August 2011
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Power consumption (TDP) 35 Watt 75 Watt

FirePro M5950 has 114.3% lower power consumption.

HD 6970M Mac Edition, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 7 months, and a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount.

We couldn't decide between FirePro M5950 and Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that FirePro M5950 is a mobile workstation card while Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition is a mobile workstation one.


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 FirePro M5950
FirePro M5950
AMD Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition
Radeon HD 6970M Mac Edition

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Community ratings

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3.8 54 votes

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3.8 6 votes

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Questions & comments

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