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AMD Radeon HD 8970 OEM

AMD Radeon HD 8970 OEM: An Obsolete Warrior or a Budget Option in 2025?

Let's find out who might use this graphics card today.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The AMD Radeon HD 8970 OEM graphics card is based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 1.0 microarchitecture, which debuted in 2012. This is a rebranded version of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, adapted for the OEM market.

Manufacturing Process: 28 nm — by 2025 standards, this is a "dinosaur," considering that modern GPUs are manufactured using 5–6 nm processes.

Unique Features: At its time, the card supported Eyefinity (multi-monitor output), CrossFire (combining two cards), and Mantle — a predecessor to Vulkan. However, technologies such as ray tracing (RTX), DLSS, or FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) are absent. For games in 2025, this is critical — without upscaling or hardware-accelerated ray tracing, the card falls significantly behind modern counterparts.

2. Memory: Speed and Limitations

Type and Size: 3 GB of GDDR5 with a 384-bit bus.

Bandwidth: 288 GB/s (at 1500 MHz). This was sufficient for games in the 2010s, but by 2025, the memory size is inadequate for 4K textures or complex scenes. For example, in "Hogwarts Legacy" or "Starfield," even at medium settings in 1080p, there may be drops due to insufficient VRAM.

Impact on Performance: In older titles (e.g., "The Witcher 3"), the card still shows 50–60 FPS on high settings in 1080p, but in modern AAA titles, quality needs to be reduced to low.

3. Game Performance: Numbers and Realities

1080p:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Patch 2.1): 25–30 FPS on low settings.

- Fortnite (without RT): 45–55 FPS on medium settings.

- Elden Ring: 30–35 FPS (low settings, possible stutters).

1440p and 4K: Not recommended — even 1440p in "Apex Legends" will result in about 25 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Not supported. In comparison, the budget NVIDIA RTX 3050 (8 GB) in 2025 can handle RT in DLSS mode at 30–40 FPS.

4. Professional Tasks: Strictly for Basic Needs

Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro, the card can handle rendering at resolutions up to 1080p, but for 4K or effects, a more modern GPU with AV1 hardware encoding support is required.

3D Modeling: Blender and Maya work through OpenCL, but rendering complex scenes will take 3–4 times longer than on an NVIDIA RTX 3060.

Scientific Calculations: OpenCL support is present, but due to the outdated architecture, efficiency is lower than that of modern Radeon Pro or NVIDIA CUDA solutions.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Output

TDP: 250 W — similar to a modern RTX 4070, but with significantly lower performance.

Cooling: The reference cooler is noisy (up to 45 dB under load). A case with at least three fans and good ventilation is recommended.

Power Supply: At least 600 W with 8+6 pin cables. It is better to opt for models with an 80+ Bronze certification or higher.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Modern Alternatives (2025):

- AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (4 GB): $180, TDP 107 W, 1080p on high settings.

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB): $170, DLSS support (via mods), TDP 75 W.

Historical Competitors (2013):

- NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti: In 2025, it's also obsolete but better optimized for older games on Windows 10.

7. Practical Advice

Power Supply: 600–650 W (e.g., Corsair CX650). Avoid cheap noname models.

Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x16 — works in modern motherboards but will become a "bottleneck" for next-generation GPUs when upgraded.

Drivers: Official support from AMD has ended. The last drivers are Adrenalin 2021 Edition. Conflicts with Windows 11 24H2 are possible.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Extremely low price (if you find a new one — around $120–150).

- Suitable for office PCs, older games (like Skyrim, GTA V), or as a temporary replacement for a failed card.

Cons:

- No support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

- High power consumption.

- Risk of purchasing a card with dried thermal paste or worn-out fans.

9. Final Verdict: Who Is the HD 8970 OEM For?

This graphics card is a choice for those who:

1. Are building a PC for basic tasks (web browsing, office) with the ability to run older games.

2. Are looking for a temporary solution until they can purchase a modern GPU.

3. Want to experiment with retro gaming (e.g., running 2010s games on "native" hardware).

Alternative: If your budget is $200–250, it’s better to consider the new AMD Radeon RX 6400 or Intel Arc A380 — they will support modern technologies and save on electricity costs.

Conclusion: The AMD Radeon HD 8970 OEM in 2025 is a niche product. It is not for the gamers of the future but may serve as a lifebuoy in strictly limited scenarios. Remember: even budget modern cards will offer more for the same money.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2013

Model Name

Radeon HD 8970 OEM

Generation

Sea Islands

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.

128

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

1375MHz

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.

264.0 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.

118.4 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.

947.2 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.

3.713 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.

2048

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

768KB

TDP

250W

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

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-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

600W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

3.713 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Arc Pro A30M

4.014 +8.1%

Radeon R9 380X

3.894 +4.9%

Radeon HD 8970 OEM

3.713

Arc Pro A40

3.552 -4.3%

GeForce GTX 980M

3.393 -8.6%