Radeon HD 8950M vs GeForce 7900 GTX

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking1176not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency0.85no data
ArchitectureCurie (2003−2013)GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code nameG71Saturn
Market segmentDesktopLaptop
Release date9 March 2006 (19 years ago)14 May 2013 (12 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 coresno data768
Core clock speed650 MHz1075 MHz
Number of transistors278 million2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology90 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)84 Watt100 Watt
Texture fill rate15.6051.60
Floating-point processing powerno data1.651 TFLOPS
ROPs1616
TMUs2448
L1 Cacheno data192 KB
L2 Cacheno data256 KB

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).

InterfacePCIe 1.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x16
Width1-slotno data
Supplementary power connectors1x 6-pinno data

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 typeGDDR3GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount512 MB2 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed800 MHz1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth51.2 GB/s88 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

This section shows the types and number of video connectors on each GPU. The data applies specifically to desktop reference models (for example, NVIDIA’s Founders Edition). OEM partners often modify both the number and types of ports. On notebook GPUs, video‐output options are determined by the laptop’s design rather than the graphics chip itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x S-VideoNo outputs

API and SDK support

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

DirectX9.0c (9_3)12 (12_0)
Shader Model3.06.3
OpenGL2.14.6
OpenCLN/A2.0
VulkanN/A1.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 9 March 2006 14 May 2013
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 2 GB
Chip lithography 90 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 84 Watt 100 Watt

7900 GTX has 19% lower power consumption.

HD 8950M, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 7 years, a 300% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 221.4% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between GeForce 7900 GTX and Radeon HD 8950M. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that GeForce 7900 GTX is a desktop graphics card while Radeon HD 8950M is a notebook one.

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NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
GeForce 7900 GTX
AMD Radeon HD 8950M
Radeon HD 8950M

Other comparisons

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Community ratings

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3.2 27 votes

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4.2 24 votes

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