AMD Radeon RX 560D

AMD Radeon RX 560D

AMD Radeon RX 560D in 2025: An Affordable Choice for Basic Tasks

Updated: April 2025


Introduction

Despite the release of new generations of graphics cards, the AMD Radeon RX 560D remains a popular choice for users who do not require ultimate performance. This model, released back in 2017, continues to occupy a niche in the budget GPU market thanks to its low cost and modest system requirements. But how relevant is it in 2025? Let’s take a detailed look.


Architecture and Key Features

Polaris — The Foundation of Stability

The RX 560D is built on the Polaris (4th generation GCN) architecture, which, while considered outdated in 2025, still holds relevance for less demanding tasks. The manufacturing process is 14 nm, which explains the higher power consumption compared to modern 7 nm and 6 nm chips.

Functional Capabilities

- AMD FidelityFX: A set of technologies for improving graphics (contrast adaptive sharpening, upscaling).

- FreeSync: Support for adaptive synchronization to eliminate screen tearing.

- Lack of Hardware Ray Tracing: Ray tracing is implemented only through software, which significantly reduces FPS.

The card is aimed at basic tasks — office work, video watching, old and lightweight games.


Memory: Modest but Sufficient for HD

- Memory Type: GDDR5 (not GDDR6 or HBM).

- Size: 4 GB — the minimum acceptable for modern games even at low settings.

- Bus Width: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 112 GB/s (7 Gbps × 128 bits / 8).

These specifications are adequate for 1080p work, but in memory-intensive scenarios (e.g., high-resolution textures), FPS drops may occur.


Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

In 2025, the RX 560D is suitable only for light projects and older games. Examples of FPS (at medium settings, 1080p):

- CS:GO: 90–110 FPS.

- Fortnite (Performance mode): 50–60 FPS.

- GTA V: 45–55 FPS.

- The Witcher 3: 30–35 FPS (low settings).

- Cyberpunk 2077: 20–25 FPS (low settings, no Ray Tracing).

Supported Resolutions:

- 1080p: Optimal choice.

- 1440p and 4K: Not recommended—the card will struggle even with simple games.

Ray Tracing is absent as a hardware feature. Software emulation significantly degrades performance by 2–3 times, making ray tracing impractical.


Professional Tasks: Limited Potential

- Video Editing: Suitable for working in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro with 1080p videos, but rendering complex projects will take a long time.

- 3D Modeling: In Blender or Maya, basic objects can be created, but for rendering with Cycles or Arnold, it’s better to choose cards with hardware Ray Tracing support.

- Scientific Calculations: OpenCL is supported, but due to weak computational power (up to 2.6 TFLOPS), the card lags behind even budget NVIDIA models with CUDA.


Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 75 W — powered through PCIe with no additional connectors.

- Cooling: Passive or single-fan systems. Even under load, temperatures rarely exceed 75–80°C.

- Case Recommendations: A case with 1–2 fans for ventilation is adequate.


Comparison with Competitors

In 2025, the RX 560D competes with:

1. NVIDIA GTX 1650 (4 GB):

- Higher gaming performance (by 15–20%).

- Support for DLSS (but no Ray Tracing).

- Price: $130–150 (new models).

2. Intel Arc A380 (6 GB):

- Better support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate).

- Price: $140–160.

3. AMD Radeon RX 6400:

- Newer architecture (RDNA 2).

- Weaker in gaming due to a reduced memory bus (64 bits).

Conclusion: The RX 560D only wins on price ($100–130), but loses in performance and functionality.


Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A minimum of 400 W is sufficient (e.g., EVGA 400 W1).

- Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x8 — works with all modern motherboards.

- Supported OS: Windows 10/11, Linux (AMDGPU drivers).

- Drivers: Regularly update via AMD Adrenalin Edition to improve stability.


Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($100–130).

- Minimal system requirements.

- Quiet operation.

Cons:

- Weak for modern games.

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- No hardware Ray Tracing.


Final Verdict: Who Should Consider the RX 560D?

This graphics card is ideal for:

1. Office PCs: Working with documents, browsing, HD video playback.

2. HTPC: Watching movies in 4K (with hardware decoding).

3. Basic Gaming: Games up to 2018 or lightweight projects like indie titles.

4. Backup Card: In case the primary GPU fails.

If you can spend $30–50 more, consider the NVIDIA GTX 1650 or Intel Arc A380 — they'll offer better performance. However, if your budget is strictly limited, the RX 560D remains one of the most affordable options in 2025.


Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
July 2017
Model Name
Radeon RX 560D
Generation
Polaris
Base Clock
1090MHz
Boost Clock
1175MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 3.0 x8
Transistors
3,000 million
Compute Units
14
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.
56
Foundry
GlobalFoundries
Process Size
14 nm
Architecture
GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
4GB
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.
18.80 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.
65.80 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.
2.106 TFLOPS
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.
131.6 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.
2.148 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.
896
L1 Cache
16 KB (per CU)
L2 Cache
1024KB
TDP
65W
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.
16
Suggested PSU
250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
2.148 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
2.243 +4.4%
2.193 +2.1%
2.064 -3.9%