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AMD Radeon HD 8950 OEM

AMD Radeon HD 8950 OEM: A Hybrid of the Past and Future for Budget Gamers

April 2025

In the world of graphics cards, AMD continues to amaze with solutions tailored for various user categories. The Radeon HD 8950 OEM is an intriguing hybrid that combines a tried-and-true architecture with modern technologies. Let’s explore who this model is suitable for in 2025.

1. Architecture and Key Features

The HD 8950 OEM is built on the upgraded RDNA 1.5 architecture—an optimized version of RDNA 1 (2019) with elements from RDNA 2. This allows for cost reduction while maintaining basic support for current technologies.

- Manufacturing Process: 7 nm (TSMC).

- Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.2: Upscaling to increase FPS in games.

- DirectX Raytracing (DXR): Ray tracing at the software level, but without dedicated RT cores.

- Radeon Anti-Lag+: Reduced input lag in competitive games.

Despite the lack of hardware Ray Tracing, the card relies on FSR to compensate for performance.

2. Memory: Balancing Speed and Capacity

The HD 8950 OEM is equipped with 8 GB GDDR6 with a 256-bit bus.

- Bandwidth: 448 GB/s (14 Gbps).

- Impact on Games: This is sufficient for 1080p and 1440p in 2025, but there may be limitations in 4K or with RT enabled due to memory capacity. For example, in “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty,” at ultra settings in 1440p, video memory usage peaks at 90%.

For most projects, 8 GB is an acceptable minimum, but demanding games may require lower texture settings.

3. Game Performance: Realistic Expectations

The card is aimed primarily at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Example FPS (medium settings, FSR 2.2 Quality):

- “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6”: 75 FPS (1080p), 55 FPS (1440p).

- “Starfield: Colony Wars”: 60 FPS (1080p), 45 FPS (1440p).

- “The Elder Scrolls VI”: 50 FPS (1440p without RT).

Ray Tracing decreases FPS by 30-40%, so using FSR is recommended. Playing in 4K is only feasible in older titles (“The Witcher 3” — 60 FPS at high settings).

4. Professional Tasks: Limited Capabilities

The card is only suitable for limited professional use:

- Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve, rendering a 4K project takes 20% longer than with the RX 7600 XT.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and Maya run smoothly, but rendering via OpenCL is slower than on NVIDIA with CUDA.

- Scientific Computations: Support for OpenCL 3.0 allows for GPU usage in entry-level machine learning, but the 8 GB memory is a bottleneck.

In summary: The HD 8950 OEM is a choice for hobby projects but not for professional studios.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 180 W.

- Recommendations:

- Power Supply: 500 W (with headroom for the CPU).

- Cooling: The 2-slot cooler is adequate but can be noisy under load, reaching up to 38 dB.

- Case: At least 2 fans (intake + exhaust). Avoid compact cases without airflow.

The card does not require liquid cooling, but it can overheat when overclocked—it's better to use stock settings.

6. Comparison with Competitors

- AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT: 15-20% faster but more expensive ($350 vs. $270).

- NVIDIA RTX 4060: Better in RT and DLSS 3.5, but costs $330.

- Intel Arc A770: Comparable in DirectX 12 but has optimization problems with older games.

The HD 8950 OEM wins on price but loses in technological prowess. It’s a choice for those who aren’t heavily focused on RT.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: 500-550 W (80+ Bronze). Example: Corsair CX550.

- Compatibility: PCIe 4.0 x16, requires 2x8-pin connectors. Supports Windows 11 and Linux (AMD Adrenalin drivers 25.4.1).

- Drivers: Regularly update via Radeon Software—improvements for FSR 2.2 significantly affect FPS.

Avoid outdated motherboards with PCIe 3.0—performance loss could be up to 5%.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($270) for 1080p/1440p performance.

- Support for FSR 2.2 and Anti-Lag+.

- Better energy efficiency compared to 2020-2022 counterparts.

Cons:

- Weak implementation of ray tracing.

- Only 8 GB of memory.

- Noisy cooling system.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Consider the HD 8950 OEM?

This graphics card is a solid option:

- For gamers with 1080p/1440p monitors who are willing to compromise on ultra settings.

- For entry-level PC builds with Ryzen 5 7500F or Intel Core i5-13400F processors.

- For those who value stability—AMD drivers are well optimized for both older and newer games.

If you’re not chasing 4K or maximum RT, the HD 8950 OEM will be a reliable companion for 2-3 years. However, for future projects with Unreal Engine 6 and above, consider models with 12+ GB of memory.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2013

Model Name

Radeon HD 8950 OEM

Generation

Sea Islands

Base Clock

850MHz

Boost Clock

925MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

4,313 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

112

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

3GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

384bit

Memory Clock

1250MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

240.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

29.60 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

103.6 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

828.8 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

3.381 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1792

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

768KB

TDP

200W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_1)

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

3.381 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 6450M

3.703 +9.5%

Radeon R9 M295X Mac Edition

3.552 +5.1%

Radeon HD 8950 OEM

3.381

GeForce GTX 680

3.315 -2%

FirePro W7100

3.231 -4.4%