Radeon HD 8970M vs Radeon Pro W5500M

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 8970M and Radeon Pro W5500M, 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 Radeon HD 8970M stacks up against Radeon Pro W5500M, check out specs charts below.

Radeon HD 8970M is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon HD 8970M is only used in laptop graphics. It has 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 Radeon HD 8970M here:

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 8970M Radeon Pro W5500M
Power consumption (TDP) 100 Watt 85 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 4.0 x8
Supplementary power connectors None
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR6
Maximum RAM amount 4 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors No outputs No outputs
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  • Radeon HD 8970M has 17% more power consumption, than Radeon Pro W5500M.
  • Radeon HD 8970M is connected by PCIe 3.0 x16, and Radeon Pro W5500M uses PCIe 4.0 x8 interface.
  • Radeon HD 8970M and Radeon Pro W5500M have maximum RAM of 4 GB.
  • Radeon HD 8970M is used in Laptops, and Radeon Pro W5500M - in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 8970M is build with GCN architecture, and Radeon Pro W5500M - with RDNA 1.0.
  • Radeon HD 8970M is manufactured by 28 nm process technology, and Radeon Pro W5500M - by 7 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon Pro W5500M is 7200 MHz higher, than Radeon HD 8970M.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 20−22 14−16
ultra / 1080p 12−14 8−9
QHD / 1440p 6−7 3−4
4K / 2160p 5−6
low / 720p 35−40 30−33
medium / 1080p 24−27 18−20
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 8970M in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 33% more, than Radeon Pro W5500M.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 8970M Radeon Pro W5500M
Architecture GCN RDNA 1.0
Code name Neptune Navi 14
Type Laptop Workstation
Release date 15 May 2013 10 February 2020
Pipelines 1280 1408
Core clock speed 850 MHz
Boost Clock 900 MHz 1450 MHz
Transistor count 2,800 million 6,400 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 7 nm
Texture fill rate 72.00 127.6
Floating-point performance 2,304 gflops
Memory bus width 256 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 4800 MHz 12000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 153.6 GB/s 192.0 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX 12 (11_1) 12 (12_1)
Shader Model 5.1 6.5
OpenGL 4.6 4.6
OpenCL 1.2 2.0
Vulkan 1.2.131 1.2.131
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 273 Mh/s
Laptop size large
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