A search for a high-mass Higgs boson is performed in the and decay channels using collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb collected at 8 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. No evidence of a high-mass Higgs boson is found. Limits on as a function of the Higgs boson mass are determined in three different scenarios: one in which the heavy Higgs boson has a narrow width compared to the experimental resolution, one for a width increasing with the boson mass and modeled by the complex-pole scheme following the same behavior as in the Standard Model, and one for intermediate widths. The upper range of the search is GeV for the narrow-width scenario and GeV for the other two scenarios. The lower edge of the search range is -- GeV and depends on the analysis channel and search scenario. For each signal interpretation, individual and combined limits from the two decay channels are presented. At GeV, the highest-mass point tested, for a narrow-width Higgs boson is constrained to be less than 21 fb and 6.0 fb at 95% CL for the gluon fusion and vector-boson fusion production modes, respectively.