Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire vs Radeon HD 8970M

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire and Radeon HD 8970M, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire stacks up against Radeon HD 8970M, check out specs charts below.

Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire and Radeon HD 8970M are Laptop Graphics Cards

Note: Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire and Radeon HD 8970M are only used in laptop graphics. They have lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire or Radeon HD 8970M here:

Main Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire Radeon HD 8970M
Power consumption (TDP) 120 Watt 100 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory type DDR3, GDDR3, GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2x1 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors No outputs
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  • Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire has 20% more power consumption, than Radeon HD 8970M.
  • Radeon HD 8970M has 2 GB more memory, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire.
  • Both cards are used in Laptops.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire is build with Terascale 2 architecture, and Radeon HD 8970M - with GCN.
  • Core clock speed of Radeon HD 8970M is 150 MHz higher, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire is manufactured by 40 nm process technology, and Radeon HD 8970M - by 28 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon HD 8970M is 3800 MHz higher, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 16−18 20−22
ultra / 1080p 9−10 12−14
QHD / 1440p 4−5 6−7
4K / 2160p 5−6
low / 720p 30−35 35−40
medium / 1080p 18−20 24−27
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 8970M in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 25% more, than Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire.

Full Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire Radeon HD 8970M
Architecture Terascale 2 GCN
Code name Broadway-XT Neptune
Type Laptop Laptop
Release date 7 January 2010 15 May 2013
Pipelines 1600 1280
Core clock speed 700 MHz 850 MHz
Boost Clock 900 MHz
Transistor count 2,800 million
Manufacturing process technology 40 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 72.00
Floating-point performance 2,304 gflops
Memory bus width 128 Bit 256 Bit
Memory clock speed 1000 MHz 4800 MHz
Memory bandwidth 153.6 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX DirectX 11, Shader 5.0 12 (11_1)
Shader Model 5.1
OpenGL 4.6
OpenCL 1.2
Vulkan 1.2.131
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 273 Mh/s
Laptop size large large
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