Radeon HD 8950M vs GeForce GTX 870M

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking486not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency6.24no data
ArchitectureKepler (2012−2018)GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code nameGK104Saturn
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date12 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 cores1344768
Core clock speed941 MHz1075 MHz
Boost clock speed967 MHzno data
Number of transistors3,540 million2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)100 Watt100 Watt
Texture fill rate108.351.60
Floating-point processing power2.599 TFLOPS1.651 TFLOPS
ROPs2416
TMUs11248

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
Bus supportPCI Express 2.0, PCI Express 3.0no data
InterfaceMXM-B (3.0)PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectorsNoneno 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 typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount3 GB2 GB
Standard memory configurationGDDR5no data
Memory bus width192 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speedUp to 2500 MHz1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth120.0 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
eDP 1.2 signal supportUp to 3840x2160no data
LVDS signal supportUp to 1920x1200no data
VGA аnalog display supportUp to 2048x1536no data
DisplayPort Multimode (DP++) supportUp to 3840x2160no 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+-

API compatibility

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

DirectX12 (11_0)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.16.3
OpenGL4.54.6
OpenCL1.12.0
Vulkan1.1.1261.2.131
CUDA+-

Pros & cons summary


Recency 12 March 2014 14 May 2013
Maximum RAM amount 3 GB 2 GB

GTX 870M has an age advantage of 9 months, and a 50% higher maximum VRAM amount.

We couldn't decide between GeForce GTX 870M 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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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M
GeForce GTX 870M
AMD Radeon HD 8950M
Radeon HD 8950M

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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3.9 106 votes

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4.1 19 votes

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Questions & comments

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