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AMD Radeon RX 550 640SP

AMD Radeon RX 550 640SP: Budget GPU for Undemanding Tasks

April 2025

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The AMD Radeon RX 550 640SP graphics card is built on the updated RDNA 1.5 architecture, which combines elements of RDNA with optimizations to lower costs. This hybrid solution allowed AMD to maintain an affordable price while improving energy efficiency compared to the original Polaris.

Manufacturing Technology: The chip is made using a 6nm process, providing a balance between performance and thermal output.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.0 — a scaling technology that increases FPS in games with minimal loss of quality.

- Radeon Anti-Lag+ — reduces input lag in competitive games.

- FreeSync Premium — supports adaptive synchronization in monitors with refresh rates up to 144 Hz.

Note: Hardware ray tracing (Ray Tracing) is not supported — solutions are purely software-based via FSR.

Memory: Type, Volume, and Impact on Performance

Type and Volume: The card comes with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus. This is an upgrade from GDDR5 in the original RX 550, boosting bandwidth to 192 GB/s (compared to 112 GB/s of its predecessor).

Practical Effect:

- In games with high texture demands (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Enhanced Edition), the 4 GB memory becomes a bottleneck at ultra settings, but it is sufficient for medium presets at 1080p.

- GDDR6 allows for faster data processing, reducing the chances of FPS drops in dynamic scenes.

Gaming Performance

1080p (Full HD) Resolution:

- Fortnite (medium settings + FSR 3.0): 60-70 FPS.

- Apex Legends (low settings): 55-65 FPS.

- The Witcher 3: Next-Gen Update (low settings): 45-50 FPS.

1440p and 4K:

The card is not designed for comfortable gaming at QHD or 4K. Even with FSR 3.0, the average FPS in Elden Ring (1440p, low settings) barely reaches 30 FPS.

Ray Tracing: The absence of hardware support for RT cores makes enabling RTX or AMD Ray Accelerators impractical — FPS drops are critical (for instance, Minecraft RTX runs at 10-15 FPS).

Professional Tasks

Video Editing:

- Support for OpenCL and Vulkan allows for work in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro, but rendering 4K video takes 2-3 times longer than on an NVIDIA GTX 1650 with CUDA.

3D Modeling:

- In Blender and Maya, the card handles simple projects; however, complex scenes with high-resolution textures cause lag.

Scientific Calculations:

- Due to the limited number of stream processors (640 SP) and modest memory, the GPU is suitable only for basic tasks in MATLAB or Python (e.g., data processing, but not neural network models).

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP: Power consumption is 65W, which allows operation without additional power supply (powered through PCIe x16).

Cooling:

- Standard models utilize passive cooling or compact coolers. For cases with poor ventilation, models with a heatsink and fan (e.g., Sapphire Pulse) are recommended.

Case Recommendations:

- Mini-ITX cases (e.g., Fractal Design Node 202) are ideal for HTPC builds.

- Avoid tight component spacing — a 5-7 cm gap around the graphics card improves thermal performance.

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR6):

- + Better optimization for professional applications because of CUDA.

- - 10-15% more expensive than the RX 550 640SP (price: $140 vs. $115).

Intel Arc A380:

- + Supports hardware Ray Tracing.

- - Higher power consumption (75W) and driver issues with older games.

Conclusion: RX 550 640SP is the optimal choice for those looking for the most affordable solution without modern technology demands.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: A PSU rated at 300-350W is sufficient (e.g., be quiet! System Power 10). Ensure the PSU has an 80+ Bronze certification.

Compatibility:

- PCIe 4.0 x8 (backward compatible with PCIe 3.0).

- There are no issues for systems with AMD Ryzen 5000/7000 or Intel 12th/13th Gen processors.

Drivers:

- Use Adrenalin Edition 2025.Q2 — optimized for Windows 11 23H2 and FSR 3.0.

- Disable automatic overclocking in settings — it may cause instability.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($115-130).

- Energy efficiency.

- Support for FSR 3.0 in games.

Cons:

- Weak performance in new AAA games.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.

- Limited professional applicability.

Final Conclusion: Who Is the RX 550 640SP For?

This graphics card is an ideal option for:

1. Office PCs and HTPCs: Quiet operation, minimal power consumption.

2. Indie Gamers: Running light projects like Stardew Valley or Hollow Knight at maximum settings.

3. Owners of Older Systems: An upgrade without the need to replace the PSU or case.

Alternatives: If your budget allows for an additional $30-50, consider the AMD RX 6500 XT or Intel Arc A580 — they will provide a future-proofing advantage.

In the conditions of 2025, the RX 550 640SP remains a niche solution, but it fully meets its goal of being an accessible GPU for basic tasks.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

October 2017

Model Name

Radeon RX 550 640SP

Generation

Polaris

Base Clock

1019MHz

Boost Clock

1071MHz

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

1500MHz

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.

96.00 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.

17.14 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.

42.84 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.

1371 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.

85.68 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.

1.344 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

1024KB

TDP

60W

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.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.344 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon 550X 640SP

1.398 +4%

Radeon Pro WX 4130 Mobile

1.375 +2.3%

Radeon RX 550 640SP

1.344

Radeon R9 M375

1.325 -1.4%

Radeon HD 6970M

1.28 -4.8%