AMD Radeon HD 6950 vs AMD Radeon HD 8850M Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records a single benchmark comparison between these two AMD mobile and desktop parts: the Geekbench OpenCL test. The AMD Radeon HD 8850M posts a score of 7447, while the AMD Radeon HD 6950 trails at 6210. This produces a 19.9% advantage for the 8850M, a decisive margin in a compute-oriented workload.

The 8850M's score places it in the 40th percentile of all GPUs in the database, whereas the 6950 sits at the 36th percentile. While both are mid-pack performers, the gap between them is not trivial. The 8850M outpaces its nearest rival, the Intel UHD Graphics 750, by only 0.1%, indicating that its 7447 score is firmly at the edge of a cluster of similar performers. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, at 7472, edges out the 8850M by 0.3%, while the Intel Arc A310 at 7550 is 1.4% ahead. The 8850M is essentially trading blows with these modern entries despite its age.

The 6950's position is more precarious. Its 6210 score sits within 0.2% of the AMD FirePro W600, and it trails the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER AD102 and the RTX 5070 Ti SUPER, both at 6270, by 0.9%. The NVIDIA Quadro K620 at 6282 is 1.1% ahead. The fact that a high-end desktop card from 2010 is being compared to modern RTX 40 and 50 series parts in the database's nearest rival list is a reflection of how far the 6950 has fallen in relative standing. Its OpenCL performance is now comparable to entry-level workstation cards.

What makes the 8850M's victory in this single test so striking is the hardware disparity. The 6950 has more than double the shading units (1408 versus 640), more than double the texture mapping units (88 versus 40), and exactly double the render output units (32 versus 16). Its memory bus is 256-bit wide versus the 8850M's 128-bit, and its memory bandwidth is 160.0 GB/s versus 64.00 GB/s. In raw rasterization throughput, the 6950 should dominate: its pixel rate is 25.60 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 70.40 GTexel/s, versus the 8850M's 10.00 GPixel/s and 25.00 GTexel/s. Yet in the OpenCL compute test, the 8850M wins by nearly 20%. The data suggests that the architectural shift from TeraScale 3 to GCN 1.0 brought substantial compute efficiency gains that more than offset the reduction in raw resource counts.

The 8850M's FP32 throughput is listed at 800.0 GFLOPS, while the 6950 claims 2.253 TFLOPS. The 6950 should theoretically outperform the 8850M by roughly 2.8 times in raw floating-point capability. Instead, the 8850M scores higher. This discrepancy implies that the Geekbench OpenCL workload is not purely ALU-bound, or that the GCN architecture's scheduling and memory access patterns are better suited to this particular test. The 8850M's 28 nm process node, versus the 6950's 40 nm node, likely contributes to higher effective clock stability under load, though the recorded base and boost clocks are modest at 575 MHz and 625 MHz respectively.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the recorded Geekbench OpenCL benchmark?

A: The AMD Radeon HD 8850M wins with a score of 7447 against the AMD Radeon HD 6950's 6210, a 19.9% difference.

Q: How does the 8850M compare to its nearest rivals in the database?

A: The 8850M is nearly identical to the Intel UHD Graphics 750 (0.1% ahead) and the AMD Radeon R7 350 (0.3% ahead), but trails the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 by 0.3% and the Intel Arc A310 by 1.4%.

Q: Where does the 6950 rank among all GPUs?

A: The 6950 sits at the 36th percentile of all GPUs in the database, with an average benchmark score of 6210.

Q: Does the 6950 have more raw compute resources than the 8850M?

A: Yes, the 6950 has 1408 shading units, 88 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, compared to the 8850M's 640 shading units, 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. It also has a 256-bit memory bus with 160.0 GB/s bandwidth versus the 8850M's 128-bit bus and 64.00 GB/s.

Q: What is the 8850M's percentile ranking?

A: The 8850M is at the 40th percentile of all GPUs, higher than the 6950's 36th percentile.

Q: Which GPU has higher memory clock speed?

A: The 6950's memory runs at 1250 MHz (5 Gbps effective), while the 8850M's memory runs at 1000 MHz (4 Gbps effective).

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs represent fundamentally different design philosophies from AMD. The 8850M is built on the GCN 1.0 architecture, using the Venus chip, and fabricated on TSMC's 28 nm process. The 6950 uses the older TeraScale 3 architecture, with the Cayman chip, on a 40 nm process at the same foundry.

The transistor counts reflect the generational shift. The 6950 packs 2,640 million transistors into a 389 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 6.8M per mm². The 8850M uses only 1,500 million transistors on a much smaller 123 mm² die, achieving a density of 12.2M per mm². The 28 nm node allows nearly double the density, which explains how the 8850M can deliver competitive compute performance with far fewer resources.

GCN 1.0 was designed from the ground up for compute workloads, with a unified shader architecture that prioritizes parallel execution efficiency. TeraScale 3, by contrast, was a VLIW-based design that excelled at traditional graphics rasterization but was less efficient at general-purpose compute tasks. The benchmark data suggests that this architectural difference is the primary reason the 8850M outperforms the 6950 in OpenCL despite having less than half the shading units.

The API support further highlights the architectural gap. The 8850M supports DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.170. The 6950 is limited to DirectX 11.2 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.4, with no Vulkan support recorded in the database. This means the 8850M can access modern rendering features and compute APIs that the 6950 simply cannot use.

The 8850M also uses PCIe 2.0 x16 interface, a newer bus standard, whereas the 6950 is limited to PCIe 2.0 x16. The 6950 compensates with a much larger memory pool in capacity and bandwidth, so the older bus is less of a bottleneck for its workload.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every major specification category. The 8850M uses the Venus chip on a 28 nm process, while the 6950 uses the Cayman chip on 40 nm. The 8850M's die is 123 mm² with 1,500 million transistors; the 6950's die is 389 mm² with 2,640 million transistors.

Clock speeds are recorded differently for each. The 8850M has a base clock of 575 MHz and a boost clock of 625 MHz, while the 6950's base and boost clocks are not recorded in the database. Memory clocks also differ: the 8850M runs at 1000 MHz (4 Gbps effective), the 6950 at 1250 MHz (5 Gbps effective).

Memory configuration favors the 6950. Both have 2 GB of GDDR5, but the 6950's bus width is 256-bit against the 8850M's 128-bit. This yields bandwidth of 160.0 GB/s for the 6950 versus 64.00 GB/s for the 8850M.

Compute resources are heavily skewed toward the 6950: 1408 shading units versus 640, 88 TMUs versus 40, and 32 ROPs versus 16. Pixel rate is 25.60 GPixel/s versus 10.00 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 70.40 GTexel/s versus 25.00 GTexel/s. FP32 throughput is 2.253 TFLOPS versus 800.0 GFLOPS.

Power and physical characteristics are recorded only for the 6950: a 200 W TDP, dual-slot width, 2x 6-pin power connectors, a suggested 550 W PSU, and dimensions of 286 mm length, 126 mm height, and 42 mm width. The 8850M has no recorded TDP, slot width, or dimensions in the database. The 6950's display outputs are listed as 2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, and 2x mini-DisplayPort 1.2; the 8850M's outputs are not recorded.

Release dates are far apart: the 6950 launched on 2010-12-13, while the 8850M arrived on 2013-03-31. The 6950's predecessor is Evergreen and its successor is Southern Islands; the 8850M's predecessor is London and its successor is Gem System. The 6950 has a recorded launch MSRP of 299 USD, while the 8850M has none.

The Verdict

The data points to a clear winner in compute performance: the AMD Radeon HD 8850M. Its 19.9% lead in the Geekbench OpenCL test, combined with its higher 40th percentile ranking versus the 6950's 36th, makes it the better choice for any workload that relies on general-purpose GPU compute. The 8850M's architectural advantages in GCN 1.0 and modern API support (DirectX 12, Vulkan, OpenGL 4.6) mean it can run software that the 6950 cannot.

The 6950, however, retains significant advantages in raw rasterization metrics. Its 2.8 times higher FP32 throughput, 2.8 times higher texture rate, and 2.5 times higher pixel rate suggest it would win in traditional gaming workloads that are fill-rate limited. Its 160.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is 2.5 times the 8850M's, which could matter for high-resolution textures and memory-intensive scenes.

For users prioritizing compute tasks, OpenCL workloads, or modern API compatibility, the 8850M is the clear pick. For those focused on legacy DirectX 11 gaming at high resolutions, the 6950's brute-force specifications may still hold an edge, though its lack of Vulkan support and older DirectX version limit its future-proofing. The 6950 also carries a 200 W TDP and requires 2x 6-pin power connectors, making it a power-hungry option by modern standards.

Where Each One Wins

AMD Radeon HD 8850M wins in: general compute workloads (Geekbench OpenCL score of 7447 versus 6210), modern API compatibility (DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.2.170, OpenGL 4.6), process efficiency (28 nm versus 40 nm), transistor density (12.2M per mm² versus 6.8M per mm²), and overall percentile ranking (40th versus 36th).

AMD Radeon HD 6950 wins in: raw shading resources (1408 versus 640 units), texture throughput (70.40 GTexel/s versus 25.00 GTexel/s), pixel fill rate (25.60 GPixel/s versus 10.00 GPixel/s), memory bandwidth (160.0 GB/s versus 64.00 GB/s), FP32 compute (2.253 TFLOPS versus 800.0 GFLOPS), and memory bus width (256-bit versus 128-bit).

The 8850M also wins on generational grounds: its GCN 1.0 architecture is two generations newer than the 6950's TeraScale 3, and its 2013 release date comes nearly three years after the 6950's 2010 debut. The 6950's only clear wins are in raw throughput metrics that the benchmark data suggests are not decisive in compute-oriented tasks. The recorded information indicates that the 8850M's architectural efficiency overcomes the 6950's resource advantage in the one test both cards share.