Home / AMD / AMD Radeon R7 350 640SP: Performance and Specs

AMD Radeon R7 350 640SP

AMD Radeon R7 350 640SP: Budget Classic in 2025

An overview of the capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages of the graphics card for cost-conscious users

Introduction

Despite being released back in 2015, the AMD Radeon R7 350 640SP remains functional due to its affordability and energy efficiency. In 2025, it is positioned as a solution for basic tasks, office PCs, and retro gaming enthusiasts. But how relevant is it today? Let's delve into the details.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The graphics processor is built on the GCN 1.0 (Graphics Core Next) microarchitecture, which at the time provided AMD with competitiveness. However, by 2025, GCN has noticeably aged in comparison to RDNA 3/4 and NVIDIA Ada Lovelace.

Manufacturing Process: The 28nm process technology is characteristic of budget GPUs from the mid-2010s. This explains the modest performance and relatively high (by modern standards) thermal output.

Features:

- Support for DirectX 12 (Feature Level 11_1) and OpenGL 4.4.

- Lack of modern technologies such as FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) or hardware ray tracing.

- Basic support for Vulkan 1.0, limiting compatibility with newer games.

Memory: Modest, but Adequate for Its Tasks

Type and Size: The card is equipped with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. This is sufficient for office applications and less demanding games, but for modern projects, even at low settings, the memory is insufficient.

Bandwidth: 72 GB/s — a figure that appears outdated in 2025. In comparison, even budget cards like the RX 6400 offer 128 GB/s.

Impact on Performance: The limited bandwidth and memory size become a bottleneck in games with highly detailed textures (for example, Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield).

Gaming Performance: Nostalgia for the Past

The R7 350 640SP is a choice for those not chasing ultra settings. Examples of FPS in popular games (Low/Medium settings, 1080p):

- CS2: 45-60 FPS (without anti-aliasing).

- Fortnite: 30-40 FPS (Performance mode).

- GTA V: 35-50 FPS.

- The Witcher 3: 25-30 FPS.

Resolutions:

- 1080p: Comfortable only for older or optimized projects.

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

Ray Tracing: No hardware support. Software solutions (like through Proton or emulators) drop FPS to unacceptable levels.

Professional Tasks: Minimal Capabilities

The card is not meant for serious work, but can handle basic tasks:

- Video Editing: Simple projects in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro (up to 1080p resolution). Rendering is slow due to lack of AV1 hardware encoding.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and AutoCAD — only for educational purposes. OpenCL acceleration works, but is much slower than modern GPUs.

- Scientific Calculations: Inefficient due to the low number of stream processors (640 compared to thousands in RDNA 3).

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP: 55W — one of the main advantages of the card. It does not require powerful cooling and fits well in compact cases.

Recommendations:

- Cooling: A passive heatsink or a single 80mm fan is sufficient even under load.

- Case: It’s better to use systems with good ventilation to avoid thermal throttling.

Comparison with Competitors

In its segment ($70-100), the R7 350 640SP competes with:

- NVIDIA GT 1030 (GDDR5): Comparable performance, but the GT 1030 supports newer drivers.

- AMD Radeon RX 540: 15-20% faster in games, but rarely available for sale.

- Intel Arc A310: A modern alternative with FSR and AV1 support, but more expensive ($120).

Practical Tips

1. Power Supply: A 350-400W PSU with a 6-pin PCIe connector is sufficient.

2. Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x16 (backward compatible with 2.0).

- Recommended for use with processors like Intel Core i3 or Ryzen 3.

3. Drivers: Official AMD support ended in 2022. For Windows 11/12 and Linux, third-party solutions or stable versions from 2021 will be needed.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($75-90 for new units).

- Energy efficiency.

- Quiet operation.

Cons:

- Outdated architecture.

- Lack of support for modern technologies (FSR, Ray Tracing).

- Limited memory capacity.

Final Conclusion: Who is the R7 350 640SP suitable for?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Office PC owners who need to accelerate image output or work with 2D graphics.

2. Retro gaming enthusiasts building systems to run projects from the 2000s.

3. Budget users looking for a temporary solution before upgrading.

If you’re willing to spend an additional $30-50, consider a used RX 570 or a new Intel Arc A310 — they will offer a significantly better experience. However, in its current conditions, the R7 350 640SP remains a symbol of the “small but loyal” approach to budget builds.

Prices are current as of April 2025. Check availability at official AMD stores and partners.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

January 2019

Model Name

Radeon R7 350 640SP

Generation

Pirate Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

1,500 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

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 1.0

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

1125MHz

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.

72.00 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.

14.80 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.

37.00 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.

74.00 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.

1.16 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.

640

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

55W

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

None

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

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.16 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro K4000

1.219 +5.1%

FirePro V7760

1.176 +1.4%

Radeon R7 350 640SP

1.16

Mobility Radeon HD 5870

1.142 -1.6%

GeForce GT 1030

1.104 -4.8%