Radeon HD 8950M vs GeForce GTX 860M

Primary details

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

Place in the ranking	517	not rated
Place by popularity	not in top-100	not in top-100
Architecture	Maxwell (2014−2018)	GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code name	N15P-GX	Saturn
Market segment	Laptop	Desktop
Release date	12 March 2014 (10 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 cores	640	768
CUDA cores	1152 or 640	no data
Core clock speed	797 MHz	1075 MHz
Boost clock speed	915 MHz	no data
Number of transistors	1,870 million	2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology	28 nm	28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)	75 Watt	100 Watt
Texture fill rate	43.40	51.60
Floating-point processing power	1.389 gflops	1.651 gflops
ROPs	16	16
TMUs	40	48

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	medium sized	no data
Bus support	PCI Express 2.0, PCI Express 3.0	no data
Interface	MXM-B (3.0)	PCIe 3.0 x16
Width	no data	MXM Module
Supplementary power connectors	None	no data
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	4 GB	2 GB
Standard memory configuration	GDDR5	no data
Memory bus width	128 Bit	128 Bit
Memory clock speed	Up to 2500 MHz	5500 MHz
Memory bandwidth	80.0 GB/s	88 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	No outputs
eDP 1.2 signal support	Up to 3840x2160	no data
LVDS signal support	Up to 1920x1200	no data
VGA аnalog display support	Up to 2048x1536	no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) support	Up to 3840x2160	no data
HDMI	+	-
HDCP content protection	+	-
7.1 channel HD audio on HDMI	+	-
TrueHD and DTS-HD audio bitstreaming	+	-

Supported technologies

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

H.264, VC1, MPEG2 1080p video decoder	+	-
Optimus	+	-
Ansel	+	-

API compatibility

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

DirectX	12 (11_0)	12 (12_0)
Shader Model	5.1	6.3
OpenGL	4.5	4.6
OpenCL	1.1	2.0
Vulkan	1.1.126	1.2.131
CUDA	+	-

Pros & cons summary

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Recency	12 March 2014	14 May 2013
Maximum RAM amount	4 GB	2 GB
Power consumption (TDP)	75 Watt	100 Watt

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