Radeon HD 8950M vs ATI Mobility HD 5870

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Primary details

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

Place in the ranking782not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency4.06no data
ArchitectureTeraScale 2 (2009−2015)GCN 2.0 (2013−2017)
GPU code nameBroadwaySaturn
Market segmentLaptopLaptop
Release date7 January 2010 (14 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 cores800768
Core clock speed700 MHz1075 MHz
Number of transistors1,040 million2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology40 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)50 Watt100 Watt
Texture fill rate28.0051.60
Floating-point processing power1.12 TFLOPS1.651 TFLOPS
ROPs1616
TMUs4048

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
InterfaceMXM-B (3.0)PCIe 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 amount1 GB2 GB
Memory bus width128 Bit128 Bit
Memory clock speed1000 MHz1375 MHz
Memory bandwidth64 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.

DirectX11.2 (11_0)12 (12_0)
Shader Model5.06.3
OpenGL4.44.6
OpenCL1.22.0
VulkanN/A1.2.131

Pros & cons summary


Recency 7 January 2010 14 May 2013
Maximum RAM amount 1 GB 2 GB
Chip lithography 40 nm 28 nm
Power consumption (TDP) 50 Watt 100 Watt

ATI Mobility HD 5870 has 100% lower power consumption.

HD 8950M, on the other hand, has an age advantage of 3 years, a 100% higher maximum VRAM amount, and a 42.9% more advanced lithography process.

We couldn't decide between Mobility Radeon HD 5870 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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ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870
Mobility Radeon HD 5870
AMD Radeon HD 8950M
Radeon HD 8950M

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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


3.3 69 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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