AMD Radeon HD 8970M vs NVIDIA Quadro M4000M Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only shared benchmark result in this comparison is Geekbench OpenCL, where the AMD Radeon HD 8970M scores 21,237 against the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M’s 19,989. That is a 6.2% advantage for the AMD part, a decisive margin in GPU terms. The HD 8970M’s OpenCL score lands it in the 66th percentile of all GPUs, while the Quadro M4000M sits at the 65th percentile — a narrow gap in the overall distribution, but one that still favors the older AMD chip in this specific compute workload.

The delta matters more than the raw figures suggest. The HD 8970M’s nearest rivals include the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile at 21,379 (0.7% ahead) and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 at 21,629 (1.8% ahead). The Quadro M4000M, by contrast, trails its own closest competitors: the GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile at 20,534 is 0.3% faster, and the Intel Arc B570 at 20,556 is 0.4% faster. This places the two cards in different competitive neighborhoods — the HD 8970M is competing with modern professional mobile silicon, while the M4000M sits just below a cluster of newer mainstream parts.

The Quadro M4000M does have one advantage in the benchmark record: it has a Geekbench Vulkan score of 20,971, whereas the HD 8970M has no Vulkan benchmark listed. This is not directly comparable as a head-to-head result, but it indicates the NVIDIA card has been validated across a broader range of API workloads in this database.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the direct benchmark comparison?

A: The AMD Radeon HD 8970M wins the only shared test, Geekbench OpenCL, by 6.2% — scoring 21,237 versus 19,989 for the NVIDIA Quadro M4000M.

Q: How do these cards compare to their nearest rivals?

A: The HD 8970M is 0.4% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL and 1% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050, while trailing the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile by 0.7% and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 by 1.8%. The Quadro M4000M trails all four listed rivals, with deltas ranging from -0.3% (GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile) to -0.9% (AMD Radeon R9 M390X).

Q: What is the average benchmark score for each card?

A: The HD 8970M averages 21,237 across its benchmark results, while the Quadro M4000M averages 20,480 across its two tests (19,989 OpenCL and 20,971 Vulkan).

Q: Which card has better API support?

A: The Quadro M4000M supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4, while the HD 8970M supports DirectX 12 (11_1) and Vulkan 1.2.170. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Q: Do these GPUs have similar memory capabilities?

A: Both have 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus. The Quadro M4000M’s memory runs at 5 Gbps effective (160.4 GB/s bandwidth) versus the HD 8970M’s 4.8 Gbps effective (153.6 GB/s bandwidth), giving the NVIDIA card a 4.4% bandwidth advantage.

Q: Which card is more recent?

A: The Quadro M4000M was released in August 2015, over two years after the HD 8970M’s May 2013 launch. Both are now end-of-life products.

The Verdict

The data points to the AMD Radeon HD 8970M as the stronger compute performer in the shared OpenCL workload. Its 6.2% lead over the Quadro M4000M is not marginal — it places the HD 8970M in the same performance tier as the RTX A4000 Mobile and Quadro RTX 5000, both of which are far more recent professional parts. The Quadro M4000M, by contrast, sits below the GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile and Intel Arc B570, indicating it has fallen further behind the modern curve.

However, the choice is not purely about raw score. The Quadro M4000M offers a broader API feature set, including DirectX 12_1 and Vulkan 1.4, which may matter for professional applications that leverage these newer interfaces. Its Vulkan score of 20,971 suggests respectable performance in that API, though no direct comparison to the HD 8970M is available.

For users prioritizing OpenCL compute throughput, the HD 8970M is the clear winner from this data. For users who need newer API support or who expect to run Vulkan-based workloads, the Quadro M4000M has demonstrable capability that the AMD card lacks in this record. The HD 8970M’s higher percentile ranking (66th versus 65th) reinforces its slight overall edge, but the practical difference between these two end-of-life mobile GPUs is small enough that API compatibility should drive the decision.

Specification Differences

| Specification | AMD Radeon HD 8970M | NVIDIA Quadro M4000M |

|---|---|---|

| Chip | Neptune | GM204 |

| Architecture | GCN 1.0 | Maxwell 2.0 |

| Generation | Solar System (HD 8900M) | Quadro Maxwell-M (Mx000M) |

| Transistors | 2,800 million | 5,200 million |

| Die Size | 212 mm² | 398 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 13.2M / mm² | 13.1M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 850 MHz | 975 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 900 MHz | 1013 MHz |

| Memory Clock | 1200 MHz (4.8 Gbps effective) | 1253 MHz (5 Gbps effective) |

| Memory Bandwidth | 153.6 GB/s | 160.4 GB/s |

| ROPs | 32 | 64 |

| Pixel Rate | 28.80 GPixel/s | 64.83 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 72.00 GTexel/s | 81.04 GTexel/s |

| FP32 Performance | 2.304 TFLOPS | 2.593 TFLOPS |

| Power Connectors | Not specified | None |

| DirectX Support | 12 (11_1) | 12 (12_1) |

| Vulkan Support | 1.2.170 | 1.4 |

| Release Date | 2013-05-13 | 2015-08-17 |

| Predecessor | London | Quadro Kepler-M |

| Successor | Gem System | Quadro Pascal-M |

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs represent fundamentally different design philosophies from their respective manufacturers. The HD 8970M uses AMD’s GCN 1.0 architecture on the Neptune chip, built on a 28 nm TSMC process with 2,800 million transistors on a 212 mm² die. The Quadro M4000M uses NVIDIA’s Maxwell 2.0 architecture on the GM204 chip, also built on 28 nm TSMC but with 5,200 million transistors on a 398 mm² die — nearly double the transistor count and almost twice the die area.

The transistor density is nearly identical (13.2M vs 13.1M per mm²), which means the NVIDIA chip’s advantage comes from sheer physical scale rather than process efficiency. That scale translates into a 64 ROP configuration versus the AMD’s 32, yielding a 64.83 GPixel/s pixel rate against 28.80 GPixel/s — a 125% advantage in fill-rate capacity. The texture rate also favors NVIDIA at 81.04 GTexel/s versus 72.00 GTexel/s, a 12.6% lead, despite both having 80 TMUs.

Both cards have 1,280 shading units, but the NVIDIA chip clocks substantially higher (975 MHz base / 1013 MHz boost versus 850 MHz / 900 MHz). That clock advantage, combined with the Maxwell architecture’s higher efficiency per clock, results in 2.593 TFLOPS FP32 versus 2.304 TFLOPS for the AMD — a 12.5% raw compute lead for the Quadro. Yet in the actual OpenCL benchmark, the AMD card wins by 6.2%. This suggests the GCN 1.0 architecture handles the OpenCL workload more efficiently per FLOP, or that the benchmark is sensitive to memory latency and scheduling behaviors that differ between the architectures.

The API support differences reflect their respective eras. The Quadro M4000M, released in 2015, supports DirectX 12_1 and Vulkan 1.4, while the HD 8970M from 2013 supports DirectX 11_1 and Vulkan 1.2.170. Both support OpenGL 4.6. The NVIDIA card’s power connector configuration is listed as “None,” while the AMD’s is unspecified; both are MXM modules with 100 W TDP.

Memory configurations are broadly similar — 4 GB GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus — but the NVIDIA part runs 5 Gbps effective memory clocks versus 4.8 Gbps, yielding 160.4 GB/s versus 153.6 GB/s bandwidth. Neither card offers ray tracing or tensor cores, as both predate those features. The HD 8970M’s predecessor is “London” and successor is “Gem System,” while the Quadro M4000M’s lineage runs from Quadro Kepler-M to Quadro Pascal-M, showing the different upgrade paths each manufacturer took.