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AMD Radeon RX 6650M

AMD Radeon RX 6650M: Power and Efficiency for Mobile Gamers and Creatives

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon RX 6650M is a mobile graphics card that continues to impress with its balance of performance and energy efficiency even years after its release. Designed for gaming laptops and workstations, it remains a popular choice among users who prioritize quality in 1080p and 1440p gaming. In this article, we'll explore what sets the RX 6650M apart, who it is suited for, and how it competes against NVIDIA's offerings.

1. Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 2 Architecture: A Legacy that Works

The RX 6650M is built on the RDNA 2 architecture, which in 2025 is already being surpassed by newer generations, yet remains relevant thanks to optimizations. The manufacturing process is 6 nm (TSMC), providing a good balance between performance and thermal output.

Unique Features

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 2.2): A upscaling technology that increases FPS in games with minimal loss of detail. Supported in over 200 projects, including Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring.

- Ray Accelerators: Blocks for ray tracing, though their effectiveness is lower than NVIDIA's RT cores. Enabling ray tracing can decrease FPS by 30–40%, so for comfortable gameplay, it's better to use FSR.

- Smart Access Memory (SAM): Enhances performance when used with Ryzen 5000/7000 series processors.

2. Memory: Fast, but Not Without Compromises

Type and Size: 8 GB GDDR6 with a 128-bit bus. This is sufficient for most games at 1080p, but at 1440p with ultra settings, there may be stutters in projects with heavy textures (Horizon Forbidden West, Microsoft Flight Simulator).

Bandwidth: 224 GB/s — a modest figure compared to competitors with a 256-bit bus (for example, the RTX 3060 Mobile offers 336 GB/s). However, effective use of Infinity Cache (32 MB) compensates for this shortcoming by reducing latency.

3. Gaming Performance: Numbers and Realities

1080p (Ultra Settings):

- Apex Legends: 110–130 FPS (without RT);

- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III: 90–110 FPS (with FSR Quality);

- Cyberpunk 2077: 60–75 FPS (without RT), 40–50 FPS (with RT + FSR Balanced).

1440p (High Settings):

- Elden Ring: 55–65 FPS (with FSR Performance);

- Starfield: 45–55 FPS (without RT).

Ray Tracing: Enabling ray tracing drops FPS below 60 frames even at 1080p, so it is recommended for games with moderate demands (Fortnite, Minecraft RTX).

4. Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro, the card shows good rendering speeds thanks to support for OpenCL and AMD ROCm. However, NVIDIA with CUDA and RTX accelerators remains the better choice for complex tasks.

3D Modeling: In Blender, the RX 6650M lags behind the RTX 3060 Mobile by 20–25% due to less optimization for Cycles.

Scientific Calculations: OpenCL support allows the card to be used in machine learning, but for serious projects, it is better to opt for solutions with more memory.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP: 100–120 W — a modest figure for a mobile GPU. This allows the RX 6650M to be installed in thin gaming laptops (e.g., ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14).

Cooling: Systems with 2–3 heat pipes and fans with adjustable speeds are recommended. In compact cases, throttling can occur under prolonged loads.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile:

- Pros of NVIDIA: Better ray tracing, DLSS 3.5, wider support in professional software.

- Cons: Higher prices (laptops with RTX 3060 start from $1100 compared to $900–$1000 for RX 6650M).

AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT:

- Newer RDNA 3 architecture, but performance boost is only 15–20%. Prices start at $1050.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: Laptops with RX 6650M are equipped with power supplies ranging from 180–230 W. When upgrading RAM or SSD, ensure that the power reserve is sufficient.

Compatibility: Best performance is achieved in systems with Ryzen processors (SAM technology).

Drivers: Adrenalin Edition 2025 is stable, but for professional tasks, download the PRO version.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency;

- Support for FSR 2.2/3.0;

- Accessible laptop prices (starting at $900).

Cons:

- Weak ray tracing performance;

- 8 GB of memory is insufficient for 4K and some professional tasks.

9. Final Verdict: Who Should Consider the RX 6650M?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

- Gamers who want to play at 1080p/1440p without overpaying for top-tier models;

- Students and creatives working on editing and 3D on the go;

- AMD enthusiasts who value FSR technology and energy efficiency.

In 2025, the RX 6650M remains a cost-effective option in the under $1000 segment, especially if you're not ready to pay for "ultra" settings with ray tracing.

Prices are current as of April 2025. Listed for new devices configured with Ryzen 5/7 and 16 GB of RAM.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2022

Model Name

Radeon RX 6650M

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

2068MHz

Boost Clock

2416MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

11,060 million

RT Cores

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.

112

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

7 nm

Architecture

RDNA 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

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

2000MHz

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.

256.0 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.

154.6 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.

270.6 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.

17.32 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.

541.2 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.

8.832 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.

1792

L1 Cache

128 KB per Array

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

120W

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.

1.3

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.5

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.