AMD Radeon HD 6970M: specs and benchmarks

Price now 257$

Games supported 66%

Year of release 2011

Performance 5.76

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Questions and comments

Summary

AMD started Radeon HD 6970M sales 6 January 2011. This is a laptop graphics card based on a Terascale 2 architecture and made with 40 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamers. 2 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 900 GHz are supplied, and together with 256 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 115.2 GB/s.

Compatibility-wise, this is card attached via MXM-B (3.0) interface. Power consumption is at 75-100 Watt.

It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at

5.76%

of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.

GeForce RTX4090

Compare

General info

Some basic facts about Radeon HD 6970M: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in performance ranking	507
Value for money	1.72
Architecture	Terascale 2 (2009−2015)
GPU code name	Blackcomb XT
Market segment	Laptop
Release date	6 January 2011 (12 years old)
Current price	$257	of 158889 (A100 PCIe)

Value for money

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

Technical specs

Radeon HD 6970M's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon HD 6970M's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.

Pipelines / CUDA cores	960	of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT)
Core clock speed	680 MHz	of 2610 (Radeon RX 6500 XT)
Number of transistors	1,700 million	of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile)
Manufacturing process technology	40 nm	of 4 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Power consumption (TDP)	75-100 Watt	of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem)
Texture fill rate	32.64	of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB)
Floating-point performance	1,305.6 gflops	of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo)

Size and compatibility

Information on Radeon HD 6970M's compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For notebook video cards it's notebook size, connection slot and bus, if the video card is inserted into a slot instead of being soldered to the notebook motherboard.

Laptop size	large
Interface	MXM-B (3.0)
Supplementary power connectors	None

Memory

Parameters of memory installed on Radeon HD 6970M: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.

Memory type	GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount	2 GB	of 128 (Radeon Instinct MI250X)
Memory bus width	256 Bit	of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X)
Memory clock speed	900 MHz	of 22400 (GeForce RTX 4080)
Memory bandwidth	115.2 GB/s	of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260)
Shared memory	-

Video outputs and ports

Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon HD 6970M. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.

Display Connectors

No outputs

API support

APIs supported by Radeon HD 6970M, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectX	11.2 (11_0)
Shader Model	5.0
OpenGL	4.4	of 4.6 (GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile)
OpenCL	1.2
Vulkan	N/A

Benchmark performance

Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon HD 6970M. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.

Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

HD 6970M 5.76

Passmark

This is probably the most ubiquitous benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.

Benchmark coverage: 24%

HD 6970M 2270

3DMark Vantage Performance

3DMark Vantage is an outdated DirectX 10 benchmark using 1280x1024 screen resolution. It taxes the graphics card with two scenes, one depicting a girl escaping some militarized base located within a sea cave, the other displaying a space fleet attack on a defenseless planet. It was discontinued in April 2017, and Time Spy benchmark is now recommended to be used instead.

Benchmark coverage: 16%

HD 6970M 11898

3DMark 11 Performance GPU

3DMark 11 is an obsolete DirectX 11 benchmark by Futuremark. It used four tests based on two scenes, one being few submarines exploring the submerged wreck of a sunken ship, the other is an abandoned temple deep in the jungle. All the tests are heavy with volumetric lighting and tessellation, and despite being done in 1280x720 resolution, are relatively taxing. Discontinued in January 2020, 3DMark 11 is now superseded by Time Spy.

Benchmark coverage: 16%

HD 6970M 2819

Mining hashrates

Cryptocurrency mining performance of Radeon HD 6970M. Usually measured in megahashes per second.

Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256)

118 Mh/s

Gaming performance

Let's see how good Radeon HD 6970M is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.

Average FPS across all PC games

Here are the average frames per second in a large set of popular modern games across different resolutions:

Full HD

Performance in popular games

Full HD
Low Preset

Cyberpunk 2077

8−9

Full HD
Medium Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	10−12
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	8−9
Battlefield 5	18−20
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	18−20
Cyberpunk 2077	8−9
Far Cry 5	14−16
Far Cry New Dawn	14−16
Forza Horizon 4	20−22
Hitman 3	12−14
Horizon Zero Dawn	10−12
Red Dead Redemption 2	10−12
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	12−14
Watch Dogs: Legion	9−10

Full HD
High Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	10−12
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	8−9
Battlefield 5	18−20
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	18−20
Cyberpunk 2077	8−9
Far Cry 5	14−16
Far Cry New Dawn	14−16
Forza Horizon 4	20−22
Hitman 3	12−14
Horizon Zero Dawn	10−12
Metro Exodus	8−9
Red Dead Redemption 2	10−12
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	12−14
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	12−14
Watch Dogs: Legion	9−10

Full HD
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	10−12
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	8−9
Battlefield 5	18−20
Cyberpunk 2077	8−9
Far Cry 5	14−16
Far Cry New Dawn	14−16
Forza Horizon 4	20−22
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	12−14
Watch Dogs: Legion	9−10

1440p
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	9−10
Hitman 3	10−11
Horizon Zero Dawn	8−9
Metro Exodus	6−7
Red Dead Redemption 2	4−5
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	7−8

1440p
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	3−4
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	2−3
Battlefield 5	7−8
Cyberpunk 2077	2−3
Far Cry 5	9−10
Far Cry New Dawn	10−11
Forza Horizon 4	8−9
Watch Dogs: Legion	2−3

4K
High Preset

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	4−5
Hitman 3	6−7
Horizon Zero Dawn	5−6
Metro Exodus	0−1
Red Dead Redemption 2	3−4
Shadow of the Tomb Raider	3−4
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt	5−6

4K
Ultra Preset

Assassin's Creed Odyssey	3−4
Assassin's Creed Valhalla	2−3
Battlefield 5	2−3
Cyberpunk 2077	1−2
Far Cry 5	3−4
Far Cry New Dawn	9−10
Forza Horizon 4	7−8
Watch Dogs: Legion	2−3

Relative perfomance

Overall Radeon HD 6970M performance compared to nearest competitors among notebook video cards.

AMD Radeon R9 M470 102.6

AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 (Ryzen 4000/5000) 102.26

NVIDIA GeForce MX150 100.87

AMD Radeon HD 6970M 100

Intel UHD Graphics 730 (Rocket Lake) 99.65

AMD Radeon RX Vega 9 95.14

Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 (Ice Lake 64 EU) 94.97

NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon HD 6970M is GeForce MX150, which is faster by 1% and higher by 2 positions in our ranking.