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AMD Radeon RX 550X 640SP

AMD Radeon RX 550X 640SP: Budget GPU for Basic Tasks and Gaming

April 2025

1. Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture: Legacy with Optimizations

The AMD Radeon RX 550X 640SP graphics card is built on an enhanced Polaris architecture (GCN 4.0), which first appeared in 2016. Despite its age, AMD has upgraded the chip to reduce power consumption and improve stability. The manufacturing process is a 14nm process from GlobalFoundries, which explains the affordable price but limits potential for innovation.

Unique Features

- AMD FidelityFX: A set of tools for enhancing graphics, including Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) and upscaling (FSR 1.0). However, there is no support for FSR 2.0 or above, which reduces upscaling quality in modern games.

- Lack of Hardware Ray Tracing: The card does not support ray tracing, which is typical for budget solutions.

- FreeSync: Compatibility with adaptive sync technology for smooth gameplay.

2. Memory: Modest but Sufficient for Basic Tasks

- Type and Size: 4 GB GDDR5 — standard for the budget segment. Memory bus width is 128 bits.

- Bandwidth: 112 GB/s. This is enough for gaming at 1080p on low settings, but stutters may occur in scenes with high detail.

- Impact on Performance: Limited memory size and speed become a bottleneck in modern projects with high-resolution textures.

3. Gaming Performance: 1080p on Minimum Settings

Sample FPS (2025, Medium Settings):

- CS2: 70–90 FPS (1080p, low settings).

- Fortnite: 45–55 FPS (1080p, medium settings, FSR 1.0 enabled).

- Apex Legends: 40–50 FPS (1080p, low settings).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 25–30 FPS (1080p, minimum settings, FSR 1.0).

Resolutions Above 1080p:

- 1440p and 4K are not recommended — FPS drops below 30 even in less demanding games.

Ray Tracing: Not supported. For ray tracing games, an upgrade to cards at the RX 7600 or NVIDIA RTX 3050 level will be necessary.

4. Professional Tasks: Only for Light Loads

- Video Editing: In Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, the card can handle 1080p editing, but rendering takes 2–3 times longer than on GPUs with hardware acceleration (e.g., NVIDIA NVENC).

- 3D Modeling: In Blender and Maya, it is suitable for simple scenes, but complex projects require more powerful solutions.

- Scientific Computations: Limited support for OpenCL. For machine learning or simulations, it's better to choose cards with CUDA support (NVIDIA) or modern RDNA architectures.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Generation

- TDP: 65W — power is supplied through the PCIe slot, no additional connector is needed.

- Cooling: Passive or compact active coolers. Even under load, temperatures rarely exceed 70°C.

- Case Recommendations: Systems with 1–2 fans are suitable. Avoid compact mini-ITX cases without ventilation.

6. Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GTX 1650 (4GB): 15–20% faster in games but more expensive ($150–170). Supports DLSS 1.0, but not the latest versions.

- Intel Arc A380 (6GB): Handles DX12 and Vulkan better but requires updated drivers. Price — $130–140.

- AMD RX 6400 (4GB): More modern RDNA 2 architecture, but limited by PCIe 4.0 x4. Performance is on par with RX 550X, price — $160.

Conclusion: The RX 550X 640SP ($100–120) is the choice for those looking for minimal cost rather than maximum performance.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 300–350W PSU is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 400 W1).

- Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x8. Compatible with motherboards based on Intel 8–10 Gen and AMD Ryzen 1000–5000.

- Drivers: Use Adrenalin 24.x with automatic updates disabled — new versions are optimized for modern architectures.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($100–120).

- Energy efficient.

- Silent operation in passive models.

Cons:

- Weak for modern games post-2023.

- No support for ray tracing or FSR 2.0+.

- Only 4 GB of memory.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the RX 550X 640SP For?

This graphics card is suitable for:

- Office PCs: Support for multi-monitor configurations and light graphic rendering.

- Budget Gamers: For less demanding projects like CS2, Dota 2, or indie games.

- Temporary Solution: While saving for an upgrade.

Why choose the RX 550X? It is cheaper than competitors, easy to install, and does not require a powerful PSU. However, if your budget allows you to spend an additional $30–50, it's better to consider the RX 6400 or a used RX 580 — this will significantly expand your capabilities.

Prices are accurate as of April 2025 for new devices in U.S. retail channels.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

April 2018

Model Name

Radeon RX 550X 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.

1.398 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

1.398 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon E8870

1.505 +7.7%

GeForce GTX 570 Rev. 2

1.433 +2.5%

Radeon RX 550X 640SP

1.398

Radeon HD 7720 OEM

1.371 -1.9%

Radeon Pro 455

1.339 -4.2%