AMD Radeon HD 8690M

The AMD Radeon HD 8690M (sometimes known as the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 8690) is a DirectX 11.1 graphics card for laptops. Just like the 8500M and 8700M series, it is based on the Mars chip (28nm GCN architecture) with 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs, and 8 ROPs. The core is clocked at 775 MHz (or up to 825 MHz with Boost) and can access GDDR5 VRAM (64 Bit, 1125 MHz).

The performance of the Radeon HD 8690M is similar to the GeForce GT 730M and GT 640M. Current and demanding games (as of 2013) like Far Cry 3 should run fluently in medium-low resolutions and detail settings.

The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 6 compute units). Compared to old TeraScale 2 chips, the GCN-based Mars architecture offers improved performance in this framework.

Features of the 8690M include video decoding via UVD3 for decoding MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly from the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are now compatible as well.

The 8600M series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the 8690M can directly support up to 2 connected monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features of the 8600M series include ZeroCore for reducing power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. PowerTune allows automatic overclocking and underclocking of the graphics card as long as the GPU is within its TDP limit. For example, the chip may be underclocked when running FurMark and OCCT, but will overclock in certain games like Lost Planet, Crysis or Resident Evil 5.

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it now allows audio to output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

The power consumption should be in range of the old HD 7670M. As a result, the 8690M is suited for 13-inch notebooks or larger.

Manufacturer

AMD

Radeon HD 8600M Series

Radeon HD 8690M	384 @ 775 MHz	64 Bit @ 4500 MHz
Radeon HD 8650M (compare)	384 @ 650 MHz	64 Bit @ 4500 MHz
Radeon HD 8650G + HD 8670M Dual Graphics (compare)	768 @ 720 / 775 MHz	64 Bit @ 1800 - 2000 MHz
Radeon HD 8550G + HD 8670M Dual Graphics (compare)	640 @ 720 / 975 MHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz
Radeon HD 8670M (compare)	384 @ 775 MHz	64 Bit @ 2000 MHz

Architecture

GCN

Pipelines

384 - unified

Core Speed

775 MHz

Memory Speed

4500 MHz

Memory Bus Width

64 Bit

Memory Type

GDDR5

Max. Amount of Memory

1024 MB

Shared Memory

DirectX

DirectX 11.1, Shader 5.0

technology

28 nm

Notebook Size

medium sized

Date of Announcement

16.11.2012

Benchmarks

3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Score 1280x720

6093 Points (12%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

3DMark - Cloud Gate Standard Graphics 1280x720

7930 Points (4%)

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3DMark - Fire Strike Score 1920x1080

1151 Points (4%)

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3DMark - Fire Strike Graphics 1920x1080

1210 Points (3%)

+ 1 benchmarks and specifications + Show comparison chart

3DMark - Ice Storm Standard Graphics 1280x720

69892 Points (9%)

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3DMark 11 - Performance 1280x720

1790 points (6%)

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3DMark 11 - Performance GPU 1280x720

1600 points (3%)

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3DMark 06 Standard 1280x1024 +

Cinebench R10 Shading 32Bit +

Cinebench R11.5 OpenGL 64Bit +

Cinebench R15
OpenGL 64Bit +

Ref. Match 64Bit +

- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card

- Average benchmark values for this graphics card
* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance

Game Benchmarks

The following benchmarks stem from our benchmarks of review laptops. The performance depends on the used graphics memory, clock rate, processor, system settings, drivers, and operating systems. So the results don't have to be representative for all laptops with this GPU. For detailled information on the benchmark results, click on the fps number.