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AMD Radeon Pro 555

AMD Radeon Pro 555: A Professional Tool or a Compromise for Enthusiasts?

Relevant as of April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro 555 is a discrete GPU positioned as a solution for mobile workstations and compact PCs. Despite the release of new generations of graphics cards, this model retains its niche due to the balance of price and specialized capabilities. In this article, we will explore who should consider the Radeon Pro 555 in 2025, and who should look for alternatives.

Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture (4th Generation GCN)

The Radeon Pro 555 is built on the Polaris architecture, which debuted in 2016. This is the 4th generation of Graphics Core Next (GCN), optimized for energy efficiency. It is manufactured using a 14nm process (GlobalFoundries), which falls short compared to the current 5-7nm chips, but ensures low thermal output.

Unique Features

- FidelityFX: A set of AMD tools for graphic enhancement (contrast adaptive sharpening, post-processing shaders).

- FreeSync: Support for adaptive sync for comfortable gaming.

- OpenCL and Vulkan: Focus on professional computations and cross-platform development.

Note: Ray tracing technologies (RTX) and DLSS are absent in this model — they require RDNA 2/3 architecture and specialized RT cores.

Memory: Type, Volume, and Performance

GDDR5 and Modest Specifications

- Volume: 2 GB GDDR5.

- Bus: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 80 GB/s (memory clock speed — 5 Gbps).

Impact on Performance

2 GB of video memory in 2025 is a serious limitation even for office tasks. In gaming at 1080p, lag may occur in scenes with highly detailed textures. For professional applications (e.g., rendering in Blender), VRAM capacity is critical — scenes with more than 2 million polygons may fail to load.

Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

1080p: Minimum Settings

- CS:GO: 90–110 FPS (Medium).

- Fortnite: 45–55 FPS (Low).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 25–30 FPS (Low, FSR at Performance).

1440p and 4K: Not recommended — lack of VRAM and computational power.

Ray Tracing: Not supported. An alternative is software emulation via FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), but with a loss of detail.

Advice: For comfortable gaming in 2025, it’s better to choose cards with 6+ GB GDDR6 and RDNA 2/3 architecture (e.g., Radeon RX 6600).

Professional Tasks: Strengths

Video Editing

- Premiere Pro: Rendering acceleration through OpenCL. 1080p/30fps projects are handled smoothly, but 4K or Lumetri effects require optimization.

- DaVinci Resolve: Supports Color Grading nodes, but export to H.265 is slow due to the lack of AV1 hardware encoding.

3D Modeling

- Blender: Cycles rendering through OpenCL operates 30–40% slower than on an NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (due to CUDA optimization).

- AutoCAD: Stable operation with 2D drawings, but complex 3D models may lag.

Scientific Computations

- OpenCL: Suitable for simple simulations (e.g., particle physics on a small scale).

- Machine Learning: Limited due to small memory capacity and lack of Tensor cores.

Power Consumption and Thermal Management

TDP: 50W

The card is energy-efficient, making it ideal for:

- Ultrabooks and compact PCs.

- Systems with passive cooling (in some OEM builds).

Cooling Recommendations

- A case with 1–2 fans for consistent airflow.

- Regular dust cleaning (every 3–6 months).

Comparison with Competitors

AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100

- Pros: 4 GB GDDR5, more CU cores.

- Cons: Higher price ($250 vs. $180 for Pro 555).

NVIDIA Quadro P620

- Pros: CUDA support, 4 GB GDDR5.

- Cons: Drivers often require manual tuning on Linux.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile

- Pros: Better gaming performance, 4 GB GDDR6.

- Cons: No optimization for professional software.

Conclusion: The Pro 555 wins in the budget segment for basic work tasks, but falls short in versatility.

Practical Tips

Power Supply

A PSU of 300–400W with an 80+ Bronze certification is sufficient. For a build with a Ryzen 5 5500 processor — 450W.

Compatibility

- Platforms: Windows 10/11, Linux (with open-source AMDGPU drivers).

- Ports: DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b. Supports up to 4 monitors.

Drivers

- Adrenalin Pro: Stable, but without frequent updates.

- Advice: Disable automatic updates in professional builds.

Pros and Cons

Pros

- Low power consumption.

- Support for professional APIs (OpenCL, Vulkan).

- Affordable price ($180–$220 for new devices).

Cons

- Only 2 GB of video memory.

- No hardware acceleration for ray tracing.

- Weak gaming performance.

Final Conclusion: Who is the Radeon Pro 555 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those who need a budget GPU for basic professional tasks:

- Video editing at 1080p.

- 2D design and light 3D modeling.

- Software development with a focus on cross-platform compatibility (OpenCL/Vulkan).

Gamers and 4K content creators should consider modern alternatives (for instance, Radeon Pro W6600 or NVIDIA RTX A2000). However, if your goal is to build an inexpensive system for office or study with a margin for light graphics tasks, the Radeon Pro 555 remains a valid option even in 2025.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

June 2017

Model Name

Radeon Pro 555

Generation

Radeon Pro Mac

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

3,000 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.

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

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.

128bit

Memory Clock

1275MHz

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.

81.60 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.

13.60 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.

40.80 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. 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.

1306 GFLOPS

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.

81.60 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.

1.332 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.

768

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

75W

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

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.4

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.332 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Iris Xe Graphics G7 80EU

1.38 +3.6%

Tesla M2090

1.359 +2%

Radeon Pro 555

1.332

GeForce GTX 750 GM206

1.294 -2.9%

Radeon 550X

1.272 -4.5%