AMD FirePro M5950 vs AMD FirePro M4000

The AMD FirePro M5950 is an upper middle-class mobile workstation graphics card with DirectX 11 support. It is based on the Whistler architecture found in the Radeon HD 6600M/6700M series. The clock rates and GDDR5 memory are identical to that of the Radeon HD 6770M.

Compared to the Radeon consumer line, the FirePro offers certified drivers for professional 3D applications. Due to optimizations and some unlocked features, the performance when using professional applications is more efficient with the FirePro M5950.

The integrated 480 Stream processors of the FirePro M5950 are based on the "old" 5D architecture similar to that of the Radeon 5000 series. Due to the different architecture, the core count is not directly comparable to the 1D cores found in current Nvidia GPUs. General tessellation performance of the M5950 should be similar to the desktop 6800 series.

The Stream processors can be used with DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.1, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL. The latter two frameworks allow the M5950 to process general computations.

The theoretical performance is similar to its consumer counterpart, the Radeon HD 6770M. However, due to the professional drivers, games may generally run a bit slower.  The 6770M is able to run modern games in medium-high settings and resolutions fluently (see benchmarks on the HD 6770M page or below).

The professional performance in SPECviewperf 11 positions the M5950 between the Quadro 1000M (10% slower) and the Nvidia Quadro 2000M (about 20% faster).

The UVD3 video decoder supports the decoding of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, Flash and now also Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos on the graphics card.

Furthermore, the FirePro M5950 integrates a HD audio controller to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g. für Blu-Ray videos).

The AMD HD3D Technology offers support for Blu-Ray 3D and 3D displays, both integrated and external. The solution, however, is not as mature as Nvidia's 3D Vision with regards to drivers and general software support.

Thanks to Eyefinity, the M5950 graphics chip is able to theoretically drive up to 5 monitors simultaneously. Note that this will only work if the laptop features enough DisplayPort outputs to begin with.

The power consumption of the M5950 chip should be similar to the Radeon HD 6770M (~30 Watts). As a result, the graphics card can usually be found in 15" or larger laptops with adequate cooling solutions.